Develop Your Grip

People place heavy emphasis on the core muscles. Well they try to...most people don't even know what the core muscles are. They are simply the entire skeletal musculature that supports your posture, pelvic and shoulder alignment. So even though people are attempting to strengthen their core people still don't meet lifting goals. On many occasions I have heard the grip named as the forgotten core.

We know we need to strengthen our grip when the bar begins to slip away during our dead lifts or when we struggle to perform specific tasks such as carrying heavy objects or supporting your body weight whilst rock climbing.

Your first option for strengthening your grip is to apply some form of overload to the task you wish to perform in. For example Fat Gripz provide a foam cylinder to wrap around a barbell. This adds an extra challenge for your grip whilst practicing a dead lift.

It's then worth considering changing the way you grip objects. Holding an object is second nature but to teach your fingers to work as a unit it's well worth practicing holding weighted plate in another way. Try holding a weighted plate between 2 fingers. It's tough! Practice this for 20 second bursts between each gap between your fingers.

Also consider the width. Keep your fingers straight and pick up a narrow object such as a heavy chain or try lifting a wider object such as a brick. Altering the range of your grip will allow you to recruit muscles which are often inactive.

So there's a few thoughts on developing the grip. For better practicality it's worth practicing holding objects for a length of time as oppose to quickly squeezing and instantly letting go afterwards. You may wish to read these other posts from icankeepup.com:

Is Over Training a Myth?

http://icankeepup.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/is-over-training-myth.html

One Repetition Maximum Testing

http://icankeepup.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/one-repetition-maximum-testing.html