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It is important to do exercises to increase grip strength, as several compound exercises require the same. Ideally, you should keep a few of these exercises at the end of your arm workout.
Grip strength can improve your performance during various compound movements. How?
Well, sometimes the legs and back can handle an exercise with a certain weight. However, if your grip doesn’t support the exercise, you won’t be able to work as many reps as you could.
Therefore, a stronger grip can allow you to do a few extra reps on heavy compound movements. Not only is this useful for compound exercises, but you can also use grip strength to improve isolation exercises.
Exercises to increase grip strength
You can’t exercise to improve grip strength the way you can improve your chest, back, or any other muscle group.
When you work on your grip strength, you end up working other muscle groups as well, as you can see from the image below and the muscle groups in question:
Let’s get started. Here are five exercises you can use to increase your grip strength:
1) Farmer’s walk
To do this exercise, hold a dumbbell or kettlebell in each hand. Walk the length of the gym or take at least 15 steps before returning to your starting point.
The farmer’s walk improves grip strength and improves calves. In fact, it’s a recommended calf exercise to add variation.
2) Plate support
Also known as hold a plate. To do this exercise hold a weight plate in each hand. You won’t be holding the plate from the center using the bar space, but at the top with your fingertips.
To ensure proper pressure, keep the plates as long as possible. However, it is best not to do this for too long if your forearms become too tense. However, it is a good point to note that the forearms can benefit massively from this exercise.
3) Reverse curl
To do this exercise, hold a dumbbell in each hand or a barbell with both hands. When you place the dumbbells in front of you, your palms should be facing you.
Using this grip, pull the weight toward you with your biceps. This exercise is mainly for the biceps, but it also helps to increase grip strength, as it is not the usual supination grip,
4) Deadlift with pause
Deadlifting with a pause is essentially deadlifting but pausing at the top of the movement to keep some pressure on the grip. Lifting is all about improving lower body strength, but at the top of the movement, it can have a huge impact on grip as the palms bear all the weight.
Also, when you deadlift, the first part of the lift will put pressure on your grip. Therefore, it is essential to hold the grip correctly before lifting. Ideally, you should start using straps or gloves to avoid cuts or bruises on your palms.
5) Frame puller
Rack pulls are very effective for the back. If you’re trying to do a deadlift for your back, you should be doing rack stretches because it takes the pressure off your glutes and legs and focuses mostly on your back.
Since pull-ups and deadlifts use the same movement, you’ll be able to increase your grip strength with the same underlying principles during this exercise.
In summary
It’s not easy to increase grip strength, and it definitely doesn’t happen overnight.
Just like any other muscle group, grip strength is part of your wrists. The more exercises you incorporate where you keep your wrists steady and hold weight, the better your grip will be.
Additionally, it is also important to warm up your wrists before any exercise using wrist rotations and wrist grips. This helps to loosen the joints and allows for better blood circulation and muscle activation.
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