Hi
Grip strength has been linked to longevity in many studies.
Populations who carry stuff a lot live longer.
People get strong grip by carrying heavy things and climbing and hanging lots.
The stronger you grip the more you can carry, the more you can carry the stronger your body gets.
Some good measures are whether or not you can carry your weekly shop from the car to the front door in one go, or can you carry a laptop all the way to work by the handle or do you need a strap (bad for shoulders BTW) or the little wheels?
Strong grip means strong hands and arms.
Less chance of joint issues later in life the tougher your mitts are.
Ever wonder why that handshake from some people is really a huge hand squeeze. They are attempting to send you a message on how strong they are, maybe!
Increasing grip strength:
- Hang about: Not always to mean doing chin ups or monkey bars, just grabbing something overhead and taking as much of your body weight through your grip as possible. Keep legs on floor to control this until you can start lifting them up.
- Squeeze things: squeeze everything
you can or hold (that won't shout at you or break) as hard as you can for as long as you can.
- Train your grip: have a tennis ball about to squeeze on whilst watching TV or in the car when stuck on traffic.
- Lift weights: the deadlift, walking lunges, step ups, chin ups..in fact any pulling, holding or carrying exercise is VITAL to our grip strength, posture and bodily
endurance. Ever tweak something grabbing a suitcase off a carousel in a rush? Training prevents this as you are ready for anything!
- Quit the straps and wheels on cases or bags as much as possible and use the handle.
- Use the stairs when carrying a bag (if the crazy H&S rules in some offices alow this anyway!)
- Towel Hangs:
hook a towel over a strong anchor like a tree or a pull up rig in the gym, grab both ends and try and lift yourself. This is really hard so build up as above using your legs to control your weight letting your hands take more and more until you can swing about a bit. This is a great game for kids to join in too and really good for them (remember how important nailing the monkey bars was in the playground!?)
- Kettlebells: These
things should be in every weight program and in every house IMO. The swing move with these challenges your grip under load, reactive force, acceleration and pressure..all at the same time.
- Grip trainers: we all saw these back in the 80's. Those squeezy things that weight lifters use to improve grip. They are still about and are really good at improving grip. You can take them anywhere and use them often..your colleagues will get use to you
using them in the office and in meetings (mostly!).
Having a confident, strong grip when we grab something to pick up sends all the right messages to the rest of our body.
Powerful hands mean we can carry things for longer with good form so we don't unbalance our posture and load a
muscle wrong. Doesn't always mean for heavy things either, we actually get more dexterous the more we use our hands.
More on looking after our hands in other ways coming soon.
J
