#93: 3 Ways to Build Grip Strength to keep progressing your lifts
Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host. And I'm a certified menopause fitness coach, helping women to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And today we are going to talk about something that becomes a challenge to women as they are progressing in their lifting journey. And that is grip strength.
. I remember when I started weight training here at home, I had a set of these adjustable dumbbells. They had like a little short bar and you would add plates to each end. And then there would be these locks that you put on the ends and the locks required you to squeeze. To loosen them so you could put them on and take them off. And oh my God, it was a workout in itself to adjust to those dumbbells. I would be there with the dumbbell in my lap, squeezing with both hands as hard as I could to, you know, try to get it unlocked and pull them off. And then I Oh my God, shoving it back on and squeezing and everything. It was a nightmare. And it was because my grip strength was so weak at that time.
So if you have noticed that, you have trouble opening jar lids, you have to use one of those helpers to open them. Then this may be an issue that you face too, as you progress in your weight training journey, and it can actually cause some issues with elbow soreness and elbow tendinitis if your grip strength is not keeping up.
So there's a lot of talk actually about grip strength being an indicator of longevity. And health span lifespan. And part of that is, is that it's a reflector on how strong you are in general. Now, when you start your weight training journey, you're going to be working with little weights. And if you're in one of my programs, for example, we do Romanian deadlifts.
It's one of the best exercises for, your glutes, your hamstrings, your lower back. But those are strong muscles. So fairly quickly, you are able to progress to doing RDLs with larger and larger weights. And then the challenge becomes that holding those weights in your hands is, is like almost more challenging than the exercise itself because your grip strength is not keeping up.
And if your grip strength isn't keeping up and then you're doing your set and you're really having to squeeze and your hands are really getting tired by the end, it may become an elbow issue for you. You may get elbow tendinitis from that. So, so grip strength is actually quite important. So I'm going to give you two ways that you can strengthen your grip strength. And at the same time, Not slow down your training and not get these kinds of elbow issues.
Now, I'll also just a quick side note is that sometimes this elbow tendinitis can be sparked by you doing weird things with your wrists when you're doing your exercises. So, let's say you're doing a bicep curl and then at the top of the bicep curl, you kind of kink your hand towards you. Or if you're doing a row, when your back isn't strong enough to actually move the weight backwards, you've reached the end of your range of motion and you want it to go still a little bit further. You might have this temptation to kind of, flex your, your wrists. So that instead of your wrist being straight, your fist comes towards your body. So those kinds of things you also want to watch out for when you are weight training. So when you are doing things like rows or pull downs, just think of your hand as The implement with which you are holding onto the resistance and everything from your hand to your elbow is only a holder. It's not involved in the exercise itself. So yeah, so don't pull with your wrist, pull with your back, when you're doing those kinds of pulling exercises.
Okay, but back to the grip strength.
So there are three ways that you can work on your grip strength. The first way is by hanging. So hanging is good in general, for your shoulder health and for your spine health.
It can feel very radical and it can be very hard to hang your whole body weight in the beginning. So you want to kind of do this gradually. I have a video linked in the show notes where I show you how this can be done. I'll describe it as well. So at my gym, for example, and gyms where I live, they frequently have these kinds of ladders, uh, that are hung on the wall.
And that's nice because you have rungs at different levels. So you would just walk up to the ladder, so your feet are on the floor and straighten your arms above your head and grab the rung that's highest up that you can reach. Then you just let your knees kind of go as much as your hands will let you hold on to.
And the idea is to hang in a relaxed way so that only your hands are doing any work. Your shoulders are relaxed, Your back is relaxed. Your legs are relaxed. And now I'll say two things about this. One is that most likely when you first start hanging, you are not going to be able to support your whole body weight, at least not for very long, but most likely you're not going to be able to support your whole body weight.
So best to hang on something where your feet can still be on the floor and you just. Let go of enough weight, like what you can actually manage. So that'll be just bending your knees, enough to allow weight to be felt on your hands. And as you get. Stronger as your grip strength gets stronger, then you will be able to hang more and more of your weight on your hands.
And this can honestly, it can take months to get to the point where you feel comfortable and you're strong enough to hang your whole body weight off of your hands.
The other thing that happens when you hang is that it actually allows your whole spine to decompress. And that can feel pretty interesting for me. It really felt quite powerful, that feeling and a little bit uncomfortable. So For me, not only my grip strength, but this feeling of my whole body stretching was so intense that I had to get used to that week by week.
It took me probably six months before I was hanging completely just off my hands with my full body weight. And a lot of that was that it felt so kind of uncomfortable in my lower back hip area when I would do the hang that Uh, yeah, it was kind of freaky, but anyway, so that kind of dead hang is a great way of strengthening your grip.
So to progress that you start with, your feet on the floor and then you gradually let more and more and more of your weight hang off of your hands. And then. When you have gotten to the point where you can hang your entire weight off of there, then just hang for longer and longer and longer periods of time.
I'm not talking about hours. So, I mean, I think like a minute of a dead hang is plenty, maybe you work up to two minutes, but I've been doing it. after my weight training sessions as part of my cool down, that's the first thing I start with is I go over to that ladder thing on the wall and I grab hold and I hang and I breathe.
I do deep breathing while I'm doing it. I'm not actually timing myself. I just feel it in my body. And some days if I've been already using my grip strength a lot, then I will hang for less time. And sometimes I'll hang for a little bit more time. And so you need to just build this up gradually. I wouldn't go nuts with like, Oh my God, I got to do a minute.
You know, the first time you go do it, because there you may actually end up getting elbow issues because you're gripping so tight with your hands. So Let's make this a gradual thing. Gradually give a little bit more of your body weight and I mean, do it for 10 seconds, 5 seconds, 20 seconds, you know what you can do.
So you'll have to test with that. Okay, so hanging is one thing.
Second thing is. using grips. Now, pretty much everybody, I want to say everybody, maybe I will say everybody, everybody will get to the point where in, for example, something like a Romanian deadlift, your glutes are going to be stronger than your grip.
And you don't want to stop your progress because your hands can't keep up. And you want to be able to focus on your form, focus on your glutes and not focus on squeezing. And oh my God, the , the weights are gonna fall outta my hands. All these things. So go ahead and use grips. I've been using Versa.
Grips a link in the show notes if you wanna see what those look like. Those have worked really nicely for me, but there are tons of grips on the market so you can, you know, ask your friends or if there's somebody at the gym, you can, uh, check out what they've got. But the versa grips have been around for a long time.
And I also have a video on how to use the grips. I'll link that in the show notes as well. So lots of links in the show notes, go into the show notes this time. And they can also be used in a situation like for rows, for example, you might also get to the situation where your back is stronger than your grip is.
Your grip can be a limiting factor, especially in let's say the first year that you're weight training. Year and a half that your weight training, or if you're doing pull ups or pull downs, that may also be a situation where your grip strength is going to be a little bit of an issue. So all of these.
Places where you feel like your hands are giving out before the muscle that you're working is you could use grips
Now that said I wouldn't necessarily use grips on Every single set of every single exercise because you do want your grip strength to improve
so, some ways you can apply this are, for example, if you're doing RDLs, generally, like, when I program, that's the first exercise that people will do, and so that, They will be warming up, getting up to their working weight and the RDLs. So do the whole warmup without the grips, but then do the working set with the grips.
So that gives your hands a chance to get stronger, uh, on things like rows, where probably the deficit in grip strength is a little bit less extreme than in RDLs, then you might do your first set without grips or the first two sets without grips, and then your last set with grips. So these are some strategies,
these are the kinds of things that I've done over time. I also used to use the grips when I was practicing my pull ups and nowadays I don't have to. So, so it does catch up there. I think there is often a period where the rest of your body may be getting stronger, faster than your grip strength. So the grips are a really good idea.
They are not. cheating. Okay. And yes, you could use grips forever as you get stronger, especially on things like Romanian deadlifts or, you know, split squats or squats, those kinds of things where you've got big muscles, big, strong muscles working.
Okay. And then the third way that you can increase your grip strength is by doing things like the farmer's carry.
So what that is, is that you grab some dumbbells in your hands and you walk, so your arms are by your sides, straight arms, and you just walk. I have some videos of the farmer carry challenge where. You are challenged to actually carry 75 percent of your body weight. If you're in your forties, I don't know what the, target amount is when you're in your fifties cause I'm 53, but I can do the, 75 percent of my body weight for sure. But that is a grip strength exercise. And if you can't do 75 percent of your body weight, then start with something you can do and start with shorter periods of time. You know, find a weight that you can carry for 20 seconds or 30 seconds and start with that and then gradually increase it over time.
Okay, so to summarize, let's not let your grip strength get in the way of your training. There are three great different ways to improve your grip strength. The first is by doing dead hangs. The second. is by using grips. And the third is farmer's carries. So give those a try, all kinds of links in the show notes. So check those out and let me know how it's going for you.
I'd love to hear from you guys. So please. Do send me a message in Instagram. I know it may seem like, Oh my God. And she like does this podcast and I can't, you know, reach out to her, but I'm just a normal person here. And I am very interested in hearing how your weight training is going and whether my tips are helping or whether you have some other things that you'd like to know more about.
So please hop into my Instagram DMs. I would love to chat. And with that, I leave you till next time and wish you happy training.
