Excellence InThe Palm Of Your hand

From a strong hand shake to a max out deadlift your hands are a intricate part of life and athletics. Have you ever gone to a job interview and you're greeted with a soft, limp wristed hand shake? Proves one of two things... they either don't care about the interview or they seriously lack physical strength!

Hand strength is usually the most over looked aspect of training. for example why does a sprinter need to train their grip? or why does a soccer player need strong hands? heck, why does anyone need strong hands?

As human beings we were given thumbs, Why? Not just so we can hitch hike, or twiddle them in boredom. No they're there so we can grab things, pick things up and use tools. What's this got to do with being an athlete? Well in short, everything. I bet if I asked the majority of athletes in team sports or none strength related sports more than half the athletes would struggle to complete the simplest of grip feats.

PHYSIOLOGY

A little boring physiological information. the nerves from you cervical spine control grip strength and in order to stimulate the muscles upstream from your grip you must contract your hands as hard as you possibly can. Once the muscles working upstream from your hands are contracted it provides a perfect environment for a tight upper back and strong thoracic extension which is key in all the major strength exercises a athlete can perform!

SO WHAT?

Athletes of all shapes and sizes need strong hands because the stronger the grip the stronger the contraction and the more staple your thoracic extension will be. For example , if a bench press competitor decided not to squeeze as hard as possible in the middle of the set a destructive chain and has a good chance of severe injury. or when a javelin thrower is approaching the release of the javelin and they are not fully squeezing there off hand they will be weak in their block and diminish their potential. There is endless amounts of examples but facts are without a strong squeeze performance ill suffer!

PERSONAL EXPERENCE

As a strength athlete myself it's expected that I have strong hands at all times. However that being said a surprising number of powerlifters and weightlifters neglect there hand strength and just simply assume all the pulling movements is sufficient enough. I came to learn that this is false and that what happens when your body can lift 700 but your hands can not even hold 500? I know it's hard to even judge that but I am sure any athlete who has deadlifted anything considerable (at some point) started to pull and just above your knees the bar decides to come out of your hands and slam to the floor, leaving you puzzled. Well I came across a small community that focused on doing feats of grip strength. (phonebook tearing, Tearing decks of cards, bending steel, and closing extremely hardcore handgrippers.) So I was hooked! Started out doing the grippers and progressed all the way to bending steel bars, horseshoes and nails...

OK... so back to athletic performance, How did this help me? My squat went up by 20 lbs, my bench 15 and my deadlift by 30lbs without even training them any different. At the time I was playing football and even the grip training had impacted my performance on the field. I was faster, I was more confident that no one was breaking my block! So I am living proof that training the hands leads to great gains in performance, no matter the sport.

OK...SO HOW?

Building a strong grip is not rocket science but it does take a consistent effort and a good choice of exercises. Remember we want strength here not size so we can throw wrist curls and wrist extensions out the window. We need to focus on :

crushing (ability to squeeze resistance from a open hand to a close fist)

heavy grippers

rice bowl squeeze

Pinching(ability to bring fingers toward the thumb against an object)

rafter pull ups

Open hand (ability to perform tasks with a open hand)

fat grip pull ups

fat grip deadlifts

towel pullups

Take any of those exercises and apply whatever rep/set scheme you would like and hand strength will explode. It's not about what reps and sets you do its about the simple fact that it gets done and in a progressive fashion just like any other training any athlete has ever done. Its time to stop neglecting the weakest link and perform at a optimal level.

CONCLUSION

Hand strength has been a neglected part of training for the majority of athletes. Why? Because coaches and athletes alike did not see the connection between grip and performance. However this is a call to action. Athletes and coaches learn to train your hands at least once a week in order to build a better performance on and off the field, platform, or arena This is a promise that some form of the athletes ability will become enhanced or just turned from mediocre to elite!