Generally Health

I’ll be honest…direct forearm and grip training is something you don’t see a whole lot of people doing in the gym. It’s not glamorous, it’s hard work, it takes time away from more “viewable” bodyparts, and the training it takes to really get results can be downright painful!

So that intro didn’t send you packing? Good. That means you’re serious about building stronger forearms and better grip strength! NOW we can get started.

Grip strength is extremely useful in so many ways…the stronger your grip, the heavier the weight you can lift and the longer you can hold it. In the majority of heavy pulling exercises, grip strength is the limiting factor. Building thick, meaty forearms is a great physique enhancement – quite often, the forearms are the only visible muscles that aren’t covered up by clothing!

I’ve found that the most effective forearm and grip strength exercises AREN’T the typical wrist curls you see many people doing in the gym. Sure, you can get a good pump and a good burn when doing them but how practical are they when it comes to “real world” gripping?

The following exercises, tips and techniques are all about “practical.” Here they are in no particular order:

1. A Bucket of Sand

Get a bucket and some playground sand from a home improvement store (it’s about 3 or 4 bucks for a bag of 50 lbs so it’s really not expensive). Fill the bucket up with sand. Now dive your hand into the bucket and start working your fingers through the sand.

A few minutes of this and your forearms and all the small muscles in your hand will be fried! Switch to the other hand and go again. The sand provides excellent all-over resistance for maximizing the effects on the hands, fingers and forearms.

2. Squeezing a Tennis Ball

If you can’t afford a fancy gripper, just get an old tennis ball and squeeze it repeatedly while you’re watching TV. Hockey legend Gordie Howe used to do this constantly and he had some of the strongest forearms (and one of the hardest slapshots!) in the NHL. Simple, convenient and effective. No excuses.

3. Barbell Static Holds

Set up a barbell in a power rack with the rails set just above your knee level. Load up a bar (use moderate weight to start with). Now stand BESIDE the bar, reach down and grip it in the center with ONE hand. Stand up with the bar and just hold it for as long as you can until your grip gives out.

Not only are you fighting directly against gravity, you’re also fighting to balance the bar in one hand. Very effective on the forearms and on the grip!

4. Farmers Walks

Grab a pair of heavy dumbells and go for a walk. Literally. Just pick them up and walk until you can’t hold onto the dumbells anymore! Gripping heavy objects while walking creates a lot of instability, which will work the forearms very strongly.

And it doesn’t have to just be limited to dumbells…there are Farmer’s Walk handles that you can buy that work for this. You can also use a couple of EZ Curl bars loaded up and get the benefits of the Farmer’s Walk AND the barbell static holds. Heck even walking with a couple of pails of that sand from the first tip is another way to go. Don’t limit yourself to conventional items…even a couple of heavy bags of dog food will work!

5. Thick Bar Exercises

Gripping around a larger diameter is a not-so-secret “secret” that strength competitors often use to develop grip strength. Gripping around a thicker bar puts a very different stress on the grip and forearms, resulting in fast improvements in those areas.

You can use bars that are built thick for this (you may have seen “Fat Bars”), or you can use other things to make your own thick bars. Tape is often used to accomplish this (wrapping tape around a bar or dumbell handle repeatedly until it’s thicker in size).

A technique I like to use is to get some foam pipe insulation from the hardware store, cut off a couple of 5 inch sections then set THOSE on the bar. Grip on those when you’re doing you’re training and you’ll notice a big different in forearm activation (it’s dirt-cheap and TEMPORARY, which is nice if you train in a commercial gym which would frown on you wrapping duct tape around their bars).

6. Do Reverse Curls

Not reverse wrist curls…actual Reverse Barbell Curls. This will hit the forearms very strongly AND, as you fatigue, your grip will get a great workout because it’s the only thing keeping the bar from dropping out of your hands (not the case with regular barbell curls).

7. Don’t Use Wrist Straps

This is a simple thing but very important. If you constantly use wrist wraps or other grip assistance, you’ll never fully develop your own grip strength, which will limit you in the long run. It’s fine to use grip assistance once in awhile and for maximum lifts, but the more you rely on them, the less grip strength and forearm development you’ll get.

8. Hanging

Sounds easy enough, right? Grab a chin-up bar and just hang from it until you can’t hold on anymore. And I mean until you’re hanging by your fingertips and then you slip off the bar because your hands lock up with lactic acid.

You’ll get a great stretch in your upper body and you’ll improve your grip strength at the same time.

CONCLUSION:

If you’re looking for forearm size and maximum grip strength but wrist curls aren’t doing the job, change things up with these techniques. They’re easy to implement and VERY effective – no excuses for not getting results!

About the Author

Nick Nilsson is Vice-President of BetterU, Inc. and has been inventing new training techniques and exercises for 17+ years. Nick has written many training books including “Muscle Explosion! 28 Days To Maximum Mass” & “Metabolic Surge – Rapid Fat Loss” – http://www.fitness-ebooks.com

Introduction

The majority of people seem to seek forearm hypertrophy purely for aesthetic value as opposed to recognising the the true benefit it brings; namely immeasurable benefit in carryover to the main lifts.

It’s often overlooked that the ligaments of the forearm are directly connected to the hand. Grip and forearm tie hand in hand (no pun intended) Forearm hypertrophy is dictated by the regular functions of the hand and every compound lift is greatly dependent upon the forearms. The typical person tends to overlook this factor, reaching for standard bar reverse curls in order to achieve hypertrophy in this area. Few people seem to realise that the reverse curl is one of many exercises that targets the forearms. This is the common mistake. The most obvious and most effective way to go about achieving sizable forearms is to adopt a routine which incorporates working the hands.

Working the Hands

“Working the hands” doesn’t mean knocking out a few reps on a cheap gripper your aunty bought you when you were 6 year old, nor does it mean doing some other alternative lunatic movement with a bar.

Let me refer back to shocking the body; Bearing the hand and forearm connection in mind, think of the everyday objects your hand hold and grips. Most of us grip a can of soda or a cup of tea lightly and the training folk grip a bar with a girth of about an inch. Your body has adjusted to the frequent activities. Essentially it has “evolved” to cope with the “stresses” you place upon it.

Before I state the methods to improve grip and forearm hypertrophy, think for yourself as to how you may go about in shocking the body into forearm growth. I wish to demonstrate how blatantly obvious most training principles are, by using this is an example.

Methods of Forced Evolution

The answer is simple. You don’t go about doing the same movements with a slightly modified grip or angle, nor you use a different piece of machinery with mentally shaped handles and cables. You should force your body to grip the most manually incompatible object your hand has ever held, day after day after day, until it adjusts to the stresses place upon it, essentially evolving to the pressures of your daily activities. The goal is to fool the body into thinking that the activity is “everyday living”.

So far you body does great gripping that soda can, but lets increase the size of that soda can doubling or even doubling or even tripling its girth. Do you think that the average person would be casually sip on the can with one hand? Unlikely. It’s something the body as not adapted to do. A hypothetical ” every day activity” has become a shock to the body without any reasonable resistance involved.

Let us apply these principles to the gym environment and discuss the methods which we can perform in order to shock the body into making our grip improve and our forearms grow.

The average training persons body has become accustomed to holding the same object. This is inclusive of the 1 inch bar that you are likely t hold during a typical session in the gym. Your body has built the muscle in the hands and forearm to cope with these minor stresses. It’s done it’s job here and there’s no more to do. Though your grip potential will adjust gradually as progressional weight is introduced, it’s best to get well ahead of the game to avoid potential grip related plateaus in the future.

We do this by introducing a what I call I “manually incompatible object”; an object which takes sheer effort and pain to hold; an object where every muscle in the hand including your pinky) is forced into play as you grip the most awkward object you hand has ever held. Sure you’ve lifted awkward object in the past and probably will do so in the future, but doing this religiously in every session is another matter completely. The objects of choice should be something that force a wide grip, leaving you wish only the ends of your fingers to hold the object in a “claw” like manner. i.e a “pinch grip”.

By regular practice of this, you are essentially telling your body that you have to lift this bitch of an object every training day. Your body’s only possible response is to grow in relation to the stresses hat are placed upon it. This includes forearm hypertrophy and a killer grip which has positive carryover to the main lifts. Your grip will now laugh at your back whilst performing deadlifts, not visa-versa.

The object of choice may be a “heavy” object that you can just manage to grip and clean from the floor, repeating the process or a relatively light weight which can be held statically for a long duration. i.e3 sets of 1 minute static holds.

There are a wide range of everyday objects that can be used. A favourite of mine is the “whey tub blob” which is essentially a 5lb whey tub currently filled with water weighing 10kg, allowing for 3×1 minute static holds after a good compound session. Sand can be added instead of water for extra weight:

Other Methods:

Captains of Crush gripper (ironmind.com) – Recommended 3×5 (3 times per week)

Plate pinches

Farmers Walk

Sledgehammer lever work.

Working the Antagonist (for gripper work balance).

It’s very important to work the opposing muscle in any resistance training situation. The hand in this case is no exception. In order to keep your hands healthy you must work your hands in the opposite direction of a typical grip, with resistance. This can be achieved by wrapping a series of bands or one thick band around a clenched first. The antagonist muscles are worked by extending the fingers straight against the resistance of the band.

by…

http://www.cagedanimal.net – Daniel Evans “animal”.

Excellent grip training exercise, specifically useful for gi grapplers or anyone who needs to grab cloth.

Sling a towel over the bar, and grip onto it when doing chins. Simple, but painful.

Is it advisable to train the grip once per week, as with other muscle groups (typically), or more frequently?

I had a difficult time finding the answer to this one on the web, but I think I have found the solution. As Grapple Arts and Grippage explain, there are different facets to the grip, including wrist strength, finger strength, thumb strength, pinching and so on. There is also ’supporting grip’, examples of training for which would be holding onto a heavy bar, hanging from a chin bar, etc.

So the trick here seems to be to exercise these different aspect on different days. So one day might be crushing grip and pinching grip, and a few days later wrist strength (through plate curls) and thumb strength.

As you probably know, you also need to work the opposite muscles of the body limits development to prevent injuries due to uneven development. So exercises where the fingers spread out from a closed position, such as with bands around them, or when jabbed into a bucket of sand might need to be done too.

On top of that, there are grip exercises which involve holding heavy bags by the material (to simulate grabbing clothing or gi, for example), and using thick bars when doing normal weight training (foam is recommended, to simulate the ‘give’ of human limbs while grabbing, for greater transference of the strength gains). But it might not be ideal to do all of this at once, and instead to just focus on a few things at a time.

I am reading a great book called ‘Science and Practice of Strength Training’. It’s a classic text and I’ve had it for probably over five years, but only just getting around to reading it. The first part is theory, second part application.

An interesting fact in the theory section, is that muscles take, as a between-person average, around .4 seconds to produce their maximum possible force. There are many implications of this.

Take two fictional athletes, Bob, who can produce higher force overall, and Jim, who is stronger in the first .4 seconds of movement (called the deficit zone, if I remember correctly). Just for the sake of comparison say this holds true for all muscles and all movements. Now say they have an arm wrestle. Bob should win, because an arm wrestle last longer than .4 seconds, which is enough time for Bob to exert his higher maximal force. But say they have a vertical jump contest, or a punching power contest. Jim would win these, because although he is weaker overall, these exercises take place fully in the deficit zone.

Also, it is impossible to exert maximum muscular force in a punch, because again it is faster than .4 seconds.

If an athlete’s sport takes place mostly in the deficit zone, which is most sports, there is only so much that can be gained from maximal force training. After a certain point it becomes more efficient to focus on exercises that build up the ability to produce force quickly.

It’s obviously common knowledge that say, a boxer trains differently to a wrestler, but it’s interesting to know the science and principles behind it.

Bench press is a weakness of mine, being the only sub-200 lbs of the 3 major lifts for me.  The main reasons are:

• I have relatively long arms so the bar has further to travel (but this makes deadlift easier)
• I have always used the flat back bodybuilder style technique

By having a flat back, less force can be transferred through the legs and into the bench, in the opposite direction to which the bar is moving. This is fine if you’re new to weights, or if you’re trying to build up the chest muscles, because the pecs are doing more of the work and going through a greater range of motion; but it’s not useful if you’re trying to lift as much weight as possible.

So one answer is the powerlifter’s arch, which I’ve shied away from because I have thought it is more likely to cause injury. But, after further research it seems it’s the upper part of the back which is arched, not the lower. And the ass is always on the bench.

See this video:

And this one:

One consideration might be the transfer of this to other movements – which is probably minimal since there is far less movement. But having said that, perhaps it is more useful in some cases, such as a punch straight from a guard where the hands and elbows are already forward.