Grip strength is very important in a variety of sports, activities, and day-to-day functions. It is used in Powerlifting, Strongmancompetitions, Climbing, and bouldering, and even manual handling tasks like picking up and carrying boxes and furniture.

Grip strength is important for both improved performance in these activities and injury prevention. Mirafit sell a range of Grip Training equipment to help you improve.

How Does Grip Strength Improve Gym Performance?

Isolated grip exercises are great for increasing your overall grip and for reducing side to side grip strength imbalances that are very common between our dominant and non-dominant arms. During strength sports, climbing or lifting activities, if one arm fails, both fail. So, it can be very beneficial to work on your isolated grip strength on both arms so that your grip isn’t the limiting factor in grip-intensive activities.

How Does Grip Strength Prevent Injury?

Grip strength exercises are helpful for offsetting injuries like tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome and osteoarthritis in the hands, by increasing your ceiling for load through your hands and fingers, you can deal with more grip-heavy activities without injury.

 We use many different types of grips in our daily lives, and training these can be very beneficial. Our three favourite pinch grip exercises are…

Two Point Grip / Tip Pinch Grip

The two point grip, as the name suggests, it a grip just between two points, your index finger and your thumb.

The tip grip is great for targeting the strength and endurance of your index finger, which is likely to be your major functioning finger during gripping tasks. In some cases, like hook gripping during a snatch, it can be the only finger doing a significant amount of work because of the width of the grip.

Key Grip / Lateral Grip

Again, as the name suggests, the key grip resembles of which you would use to hold a key, in between the thumb and the side of your index finger.

The Lateral Grip is great for targeting strength and endurance in the thumb, which is hugely important since the opposable thumb is involved in the majority of gripping tasks we complete and is a huge part of human dexterity.

Three Point Grip / Palmer Grip / Three Jack Chuck Grip

The three point pinch grip is similar to the two point pinch grip, but with both the index and the middle finger gripping opposing to the thumb.

Though the Palmer grip still works the thumb and the index finger, it will proportionately target strength and endurance in the middle finger more that the other two pinch grip variations.

Add these grip variations into your training once or twice per week. Practising various holds and pinch grip deadlifts will let you gain the extra edge for your heavy lifting exercises, so your grip is never the limiting factor in your lifting!

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