10 Ways To Improve Grip Strength

If like me you have been lifting weights for years you may sometimes feel like your being let down by your grip strength. Often when I do deadlifts, pull ups or any other pulling exercise I find it’s usually my grip that gives before my muscles.

To try and combat this I sometimes use lifting straps, whilst this does help when I lift heavy it doesn’t really improve my grip strength. Using lifting straps too often will make you become reliant on them not allowing your grip strength to improve naturally. Because of this reason I don’t use lifting straps if I can help it.

To improve my grip strength I perform a number of techniques that allow me to improve my forearm strength. Here is my top 10 list of the techniques I use to improve grip strength:

1. Use  the proper pulling grip – Make sure you grip the bar or piece of equipment properly, with your thumbs over the bar and aligned as shown in the picture on the right. make sure you grip the bar low in your hands, as close to your fingers as possible.

This is how you should grip a bar whenever you perform a pulling exercise such as deadlifts, rows or pull-ups and its important because it stops the bar slipping down your hands which can create calluses.

The image on the right indicates the correct grip position, which is closer to the fingers. Note: this grip position only applies to pulling movements, for pushing movements (such as bench press) you should place the bar where the red cross is located.

2. Chalk the hands – Chalk improves your grip and keeps your hands dry, often when you lift heavy weights, as in deadlift, your hands will begin to sweat. Chalking your hands helps keep them dry, but its useful if you chalk your hands as the weight gets heavy, don’t chalk from the start of you become reliant on it, thus weakening your grip strength. Most gyms wont allow chalk, if they don’t you can use what I use, liquid chalk, which can be purchased from Amazon.com for under $20

3. Grip the bar hard – This may sound obvious but try to keep a constant strong grip on the bar at all times, gripping the bar as hard as possible will actually improve grip strength. When you grab the bar hard your knuckles will turn white, this is an indication that you are gripping hard, make sure you keep this grip throughout the pulling exercise.

4. Hold the bar to finish – When you have performed the last repetition you should hold onto the bar as long as you can, often when I am performing deadlift or pull-ups I will hold the weight in my hands for about 10 seconds. So in the deadlift when I have finished my last rep I will hold the bar at the top for about 10 seconds before lowering it back to the ground.

5. Use a thicker bar – Using a thicker makes your forearm more involved in the exercise, if your gym doesn’t have a thicker bar you can always purchase some fat gripz from amazon, these things are fantastic, they clip onto an Olympic bar making it thicker, just remember that using fat gripz you wont be able to lift as heavy as normal. Amazon.com sell these for under $50, I don’t personally own them but I have seen reviews on youtube and they seem like a very good idea

6. Use a Powerball – A powerball is a device powered by your wrists, it uses a gyroscope to move the ball, I own one and must say its very tough to use, if you can get over 15,000 reps that very good. You can buy these from Amazon.com for under $35

7. Plate pinching - Put two cast iron plates together so that the smooth side is facing outwards on both sides, then grip the plates hard and stand up straight. The aim is to keep hold of the plates for as long as possible as your grip strength increases you should be able to handle more weight, this is what a lot of strongmen do to improve grip strength.

Some people prefer holding a weight plate in each hand at the sides of their body, whilst this is effective its not as good as holding two plates together in front of you, as show in the image on the left. By holding the smooth sides of the plates in front of you allows for a greater weight to be help, making the exercise harder but also improving your grip strength at a faster rate.

8. Barbell Shrugs – Holding a heavy barbell through a set of barbell shrugs is good for grip strength, the grip is similar to overhand deadlift and requires concentration.

9. Rack Pulls – Rack pulls is a great exercise for increasing grip strength, simply set the safety pins in the squat rack so they are about inline with your knees, now place the barbell on the safety pins and load it with the appropriate amount of weight. Now begin to pull the weight up into the standing position, this movement is basically the top half of the deadlift.

10. Rope or towel pulls – Using a thick rope or a towel to pull a weight is a great way to improve grip strength, for example if you do back rows on a machine and often use cable handles, substitute them for the triceps rope. Likewise wrap a towel around the chin up bar in a way that enables you to pull up using the towel, both these methods rely more on your grip thus improving grip strength over time.