Why Your Grip Strength Is Key to Your Health and Performance

Grip strength is more important than you might realize.

What do I mean?

Grip strength is more than just carrying heavy weight, it can also be used as a predictor for your health.

You might be wondering how can grip strength be associated with health?

There are many studies showing an association between grip strength and cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease, quality of life, and all-cause mortality.

The question is how?

Your grip strength isn’t directly involved with your health, it is more of your lifestyle. An active lifestyle focusing on strength and movement will influence your health. The side effect of this lifestyle is having a strong grip strength compared to a sedentary lifestyle.

Grip Strength Improves Overall Strength and Hypertrophy

A stronger grip means you can lift heavier. That seems obvious, and when you lift heavier weight, you can build more muscle. Again, that seems obvious.

What isn’t obvious is that having a stronger grip can require less force from other parts of your body to move an object. 

This is because of your nervous system. A stronger grip has better neural connections from your grip to your shoulder, and your shoulder to your core and hips.

Everything is connected and when you have a strong grip, you’re going to be more stable, which helps you move more weight.

Speaking of the shoulder, your grip strength is directly associated with shoulder health and function.

Association between the Grip and Shoulder Function

The direct association with grip strength and your shoulder function is very strong.  The rotator cuff muscles around the shoulder joint are responsible for shoulder stability.

Having a proper grip will activate the rotator muscles, creating more stability around the joint. This stability can help you have better healthier and more functional shoulders and help you lift heavier.

This is a win-win situation that you should care about. I mean, who doesn’t want shoulders to function well and not be in pain?

I have had shoulders before, and I can tell you that it is not recommended.

Why am I talking about the association between the grip and shoulder function?

There is an increasing trend on social medial talking about using wrist straps during certain lifts so you can lift more.

You might be asking yourself what the problem is and thought lifting more weight is good?

As I mentioned earlier, a stronger grip can help reduce the force needed to lift a weight. If you rely on wrist straps, you are putting your connective tissues around wrists, elbows, and shoulders at risk of being weak and injured.

There is a dissociation between your grip and shoulders while using wrist straps. I am not saying never use wrist straps, but it is in your best interest to use them sparingly. If you want to keep your joints happy, and more stable with function, focus on having a stronger grip.

Grip as a Health Marker?

There is a very strong association between grip strength and all-cause mortality. This becomes more important with older adults.

Using grip strength, you can measure body function, more specifically, a biomarker of aging. When we get older, strength declines, this is normal. Without resistance training and a active lifestyle, strength can drop significantly.

Losing strength is dangerous and will put you at risk of falling and getting severely hurt or worse. This is the largest risk for older adults, lack or strength and power.

Grip strength is a great way to measure overall strength due to the low risk, practicality, and low cost. Measuring your grip strength is quite simple and cost efficient with a hand-grip dynamometer.

What the research has found is that for every 5kg decrease there is a 17% risk increase in all cause mortality. Lifestyle is the major factor on why we see this association. As it was mentioned earlier, it is also an indication of overall strength.

What this means is, don’t go and just do grip exercises and neglect the rest of your body. You need a balanced approach.

How to Improve Grip Strength

There are many ways you can strengthen your grip, but in this blog, I will give you 4 simple tips for a stronger grip strength.

1. Deadlift Heavy Weight

With deadlifts, you are holding a tremendous amount of weight with your hands. As you get stronger with the deadlift, your grip will also get stronger. Super easy tip, on the last set and last rep of your deadlifts, hold the top position as long as you can.

2. Farmer Carries

You can use farmer carries in a variety of different ways. If you want to go heavy for a short distance, you can use a trapbar.

Dumbbells/kettlebells to carry for time or long distance for grip strength endurance is another way to incorporate carry’s into your routine.

You can use a single dumbbell/kettlebell for a carry called suitcase carries to challenge the core/grip/shoulder stability.

There are many more variations, each one giving you different adaptations, but they all involve the grip.

You should incorporate some type of carry in any program you do.

3. Dead hangs

Incorporating dead hangs in your routine, whether it is part of your warmup, finisher, or something in the middle can improve your grip strength.

Not only will dead hangs will improve your grip strength, you will also see improvement in your shoulder stability and mobility.

That’s a win-win exercise for you.

Do multiple sets with submaximal time to make it challenging and repeatable. For example, your max hang time is 60 seconds, you would do :30-:45 for 3-4 sets.

4. Tools

You can use a variety of different tools to change how you grip things during exercises. Fat gripz, for example, is one where you can attach to dumbbells, barbells, pull up bars, etc, to make the grip wider. This makes the grip work harder and will make light weight feel heavy.

Using a towel is another simple and cheap tool to use. You can use a towel to wrap around dumbbells/kettlebells/pull up bars, for you to grip and do your exercises with. Gripping the towel will be very demanding on the grip, helping you build a stronger grip strength.

Using tools to change how you grip during exercises can be very beneficial.

Grip Strength

A strong grip strength is going to take time and consistency. Overall, lifting weights and getting stronger will give you a stronger grip strength.

You can use straps if your grip is giving out on you, but I recommend that you use it sparingly, and only with your accessory exercises if you need it.

Stay consistent with your training and you will see results. This applies not just for grip strength, but also for any goal. Thank you for reading, I really appreciate you taking the time to read what I have to say. If you have questions, email me at cory@caruthersfitness.com. I am happy to help in any way that I can.