5 Ways to Build Your Hand Grip & Forearms Stronger
Muscular forearms are not just good for firm handshake but building your grip strength is imperative for lifting more weights in the gym. Building a stronger grip translates to building more muscle all over the body.
Following are the 5 ways to make your grip stronger. These are:
Lift Heavy: Rather than raining your grip with a large number of light weight lift curls for an endless amount of sets, consolidate your training by incorporating heavy dead-lifts, pull ups and body weight rows. This can help in development of not only grip but the whole arm. Work on adding weight to rack dead-lifts, a variation that emphasizes the top portion of the lift and allows for more weight on the bar hence a larger grip challenge. For pull-ups and body weight rows, constantly challenge yourself by switching grips every few reps during a set. By releasing and then grasping the bar, you’ll challenge your forearms to adjust and adapt to a variety of positions.
Train Your Grip Often: Your grip is the thing you can train everyday. Every time in the gym while pulling or lifting something is an opportunity to train your grip. To strengthen your grip, incorporate lifting and pulling in your daily routine. Doing this, a repetitive stress will be produced which will increase your grip strength as well as your forearms.
Use Grip Builders: Tools like towels and fat grips can be added to your workout for an extra stimulus. These weight bars are the enough progression on grip and amplify the results by increasing the strength. Wrap the towel around any bar or handle in any exercise to increase the thickness of hand hold.
Squeeze The Bar: Squeezing the bar actively during the exercise leads to a greater grip activation and increases grip strength. Keep the bar locked firmly in the palm of your hand and wrap your thumb around the bar to hold it in place. During exercise, engage your grip more and focus on squeezing the bar as hard as possible.
Stop Encouraging Weakness: Using tools like wrist straps and other grip aids in the gym put a band-aid over a weak grip. Rather than challenging your grip to become stronger, using those tools actually encourages your body to rely on help and may actually make your forearms weaker. Put aside your pride for a few weeks and lift slightly less weight that you can actually hold without help.