ARTICLE: Get A Grip!

Get a grip!

Still only using barbells and dumbbells for your strength and conditioning work? You’re missing out on some great tools to improve your grip and increase your performance!

If you’ve ever had a good wrestler or jiu-jitsu fighter latch on to you with a vice-like grip that is impossible to prise off, you will understand the need for a strong grip in MMA. The additional control that comes from having a good grip will give you another possible advantage over your opponent. However, lots of fighters do not use any of the many possible options for improving grip while doing strength training, and are therefore not maximising this advantage. Here are some of my favourite ways to work the grip in the gym.

Thick bar training
A thick bar is a great tool that is very easy and cheap to get hold of and can be used for a multitude of exercises. You can do pretty much anything you can do with a normal bar with a thick bar, but obviously pulling exercises are the most beneficial. Deadlifts, bent over rows and even cleans are great to do on a thick bar and really tax the grip. Expect your forearms to hurt for a while after a good session on the thick bar!

Grippers
To train the crushing grip, grippers are effective, simple to use and easy to carry so can be trained anywhere. Just set it in your palm and touch the handles together. Sounds easy? You’re probably thinking of those cheap plastic grippers that are about as tough to close as the spring collar on your olympic bar! I’m talking about real grippers, such as the Captains of Crush or Heavy Grip brands. These grippers typically start at 100 IP, which means you will need to apply 100 pounds per square inch of pressure to touch the handles together, and go to above 300 IP! If you can imagine what someone who can apply 200+ pounds per square inch of crushing force would feel like holding on to your wrist, I think you can see the benefit of developing this kind of strength.

Kettlebells
Kettlebells have many benefits, but one of the biggest differences between a dumbbell and a kettlebell is the challenge to the grip. Put simply, kettlebells swing around and try and escape, dumbbells are nice and balanced. A basic kettlebell move that greatly taxes the grip is the snatch, where the kettlebell is lifted from the floor to overhead in one movement. As the weight gets to the top, the bell will need to turn over to rest on the forearm, and at this point you need to grip very tightly to avoid an impact. This will improve your grip as well as your timing. Another much harder kettlebell exercise to train the grip is the bottom-up press, where the kettlebell is held upside down while being pressed overhead. These are just two examples of many options you can explore with kettlebell training.

Sandbags
Sandbags are very different to most types of weight, because they are totally unpredictable. Not only is there not an obvious handle to pick them up by, when you do pick them up they move all over the place! This is obviously of great benefit to wrestlers or any fighter as it enables you to develop the kind of strength required to hold on to and control a moving object. All the usual exercises will work well with sandbags, as well as simple stuff like getting it off the ground and onto one shoulder, throwing it onto a high platform or bear-hugging it and walking around. For taxing the grip my favourite two are the sandbag power clean and the sandbag bent-over row.

Towels
If you only use a towel to dry yourself when you get out of the shower, you are missing out! The ordinary towel becomes a brilliant training tool when rolled up. To make some ordinary exercises interesting, throw a towel over a bar or tree and knock out a few sets of pull-ups or loop it through the handles of a low row machine. You can even give yourself a good excuse to do some curls: loop a towel through the handle of a kettlebell or the middle of a weight plate, grab the handle and do curls – now if anyone asks, you can say you’re working your grip rather than ‘polishing the guns’!

Thick Ropes
Thick ropes are brilliant, if you are lucky enough to be able to get hold of some. Use them to climb, attach them to a sled and do arm-over-arm pulls, or even get outside with a friend and have a tug of war competition! Forearms of steel will be yours before you know it.

These are just some of the many ideas you can use to train to get a stronger grip. If you are not currently using any of these methods, try and get hold of one or two or the tools mentioned above and you will soon see the difference in your grip.