Grip training can heavily influence the amount of weight lifted for all upper-body movements. It also helps you develop great forearms with bulging results. Certain types of grip training can provide an ego-boosting experience, as you are able to handle greater gripping poundage's on a weekly basis.
Reasons for Improving Grip Strength
Enhance Martial Arts/Wrestling Proficiency.
Developing grip strength will assist when it comes to grappling in the context of a martial arts or wrestling fight. It will also add snap and power to a punch giving boxers who practice gripping exercises an additional advantage. When gripping an adversary one with weak forearms and gripping strength might sustain an injury to the wrist area or worse end up on the ground with their opponent kicking their face in. Often the key to winning a fight is to maintain a vice-like hold on your opponent over a prolonged period, and the key to maintaining such a hold is to develop phenomenal grip strength.
An improvement in grip strength generally means an overall improvement in quality as far as lifting immense weight in other movements is concerned. For example, bent over rowing, a fundamental back movement, will suffer if ones grip is not up to standard. There could always be an argument made for wraps, but these are controversial at best, and are thought to compromise technique. So, a strong grip is essential to training progress, as most movements are dependent on correct gripping technique and strength. Pull ups also rely on a solid grip and heavy bench presses could potentially cause wrist injury in those with a weak grip. Day to day activities such as turning doorknobs, opening jars and conducting mechanical repairs also benefit from a strong grip. The type of wrist action used when doing any of the above is a twisting motion and there are specific exercises (which will be explained later) that can be done to improve this.
Types Of Grip-Strength
There are two main types of grip strength: crushing strength and pinching strength.
Crushing Strength. This type of grip strength is demonstrated when you crush a can, or even when shaking someone’s hand. With crushing strength the fingers and palm contribute almost exclusively to the action: the fingers crush while the palm provides the platform - the thumb has less of a supporting role. Forearm muscles targeted with gripping movements, are mainly the flexors, with secondary stress on the extensors.
Pinching Strength. Holding a heavy plate between the thumb and fingers, as it hangs toward the ground, is a demonstration of pinching strength. Training for pinching strength has little in the way of a real world application, but it will add to thumb and finger strength and help to develop respectable size in both the extensor and flexors of the forearms. Pinching grip is generally harder to train for than the crushing grip, given the awkwardness and difficulty of the specific movements needed to target this area.
Holding Grip. This type of grip involves the thumb, fingers, and palm (almost a cross-between the crushing and pinching grips), and is used most often in a real world situation for controlling an object (a steering wheel of a car for example), or person in a confrontation. In a fighting situation, the holding grip is often used to transition between pinching or crushing, as ones opponent is being controlled.
