Probably my biggest weakness is my grip strength. That’s why I always check out anything Jedd Johnson has to say on the subject. He is the master when it comes to this topic and today I have an awesome guest post from the man, himself. Check it out…
Grip and Forearm Strength is an important aspect for anyone who trains with weights or competes in sports. This is true for many reasons.
Grip Strength helps your other lifts go up, in turn improving your weights lifted. The way this happens is by a concept called Radiant Tension.
To demonstrate this, let’s look at the bench press. When you bench, the more stable the bar is the better. With a strong grip on the bar, you will have better control of it throughout the length of the bar path. The way Radiant Tension works is when your hand squeezes onto the bar, tension begins to radiate through your wrist, down your forearm, across the elbow and into the shoulder. This tension helps you get more weight and more repetitions in your set.
To test this, lie down on the bench and perform the movement with your hands relaxed around the bar. You’ll see that the bar path can be very erratic this way because you are too loose. This lack of tension can turn into lack of control and at the least can hold you back in your training. At worst, it could cause you to get hurt.
Now perform the bench press with your grip tight on the bar, extending the tension down through your arms and into your torso. You will feel much more stable and more in control of the bar. I bet your lifts will go up at least 10 to 20 pounds just by using radiant tension, if you haven’t been already.
Remember when Stafon Jackson dropped the bar across his throat last Fall while performing the bench with a false grip? NOT GOOD! The fingers and thumb need to be wrapped around the bar in order to create the appreciable amount of tension necessary to initiate the irradiation effect down through the arms and into the torso.
This same radiant tension is produced by the hands for other lifts such as Overhead Lifts, Squats and Deadlifts. In other words, by building grip strength, we can increase our performance on the big lifts in the gym, which in turn can help us when we compete at sports like Baseball, Basketball, Football, etc.
Speaking of sports, Grip and Forearm Training is important there, too. Obviously if we participate in a sport where we have to hold or throw balls or swing a bat, stick or club, then the hands are highly involved. Baseball, Basketball, Football, Rugby, Golf, etc are all sports with a heavy involvement of the hands, so training the hands must be done the right way for maximum benefit.
But don’t think just going into the gym and hitting some Wrist Curls at the end of the workout or squeezing on some Tennis Balls is going to give you the Grip and Forearm power you need for high performance and aesthetics. You have to hit the elbows, forearms, wrists, hands, fingers and thumbs systematically with a balanced approach. Training everything the right way will get you strength gains and improve your performance at your sport. Doing the same stuff all the time, however, can lead to imbalances which cause your strength levels to go d
own and even result in discomfort and injury.
To help you out with this, I have designed an ebook that will show you how to build Grip and Forearm Strength the right way, without setting you up for injury. This manual is called Ultimate Forearm Training for Baseball. In it I show you how to use Grip Strength Training to hit the ball farther, throw the ball harder, and become more resilient against injury.
Not a ball player? No problem. These exercises and workouts will apply to everybody. The book is loaded with tricks to build your own equipment and includes a lot of information specifically for baseball, but the 200+ pages of exercises will enable everyone from the pro athlete to the serious fitness enthusiast, and even the weekend warrior to train the Grip and Forearms effectively for size, strength and performance.
For more information, click the link to check out Ultimate Forearm Training for Baseball.
Thanks and all the best in your training.
-Jedd Johnson
