When it comes to strength training, building a strong grip is possibly one of the most neglected areas. In fact, in most cases it isn’t trained at all.
What you might not realize is that grip training does much more than provide you with a firm handshake, forearms like Popeye, and help you open that pickle jar.
The truth is that little bit of grip training goes a long way. It can pay huge dividends on all other areas of strength and fitness. For starters, poor grip strength is a hugely limiting factor when it comes to other exercises such as deadlifts, pull ups, lunges, rows, bench etc. When your grip strength improves, the rest of your lifts will follow suit.
Why Is Grip Strength Important For More Than Just Lifts?
If you’re interested in getting stronger, this is a no-brainer. It’s unlikely that you will ever have strong hands without a strong body, but there are lots of strong bodies out there without strong hands.
If you’re interested in decreasing body fat, lifting more weight during your workout means more calories burned.
Working grip exercises into your program can also aid in preventing certain pain syndromes from chronic inflammation to tendonitis, which is generally caused by neglecting certain muscle groups and overuse of others.
Also, through a process called irradiation, you may actually be strengthening other muscles from your wrist all the way down to your core with the most important being perhaps your rotator cuff muscles. An easy way to feel this working is to hold your hand out in front of you and make a fist. Now squeeze your fist as hard as you can and you should feel all the muscles in your arm and even your core tighten up as well. To utilize this during your training squeeze the bar during exercises like the bench press and deadlifts to instantly lift more weight and protect your shoulders!
5 Types of Grip Strength Exercises
There are several types of grip exercises that all train different muscle groups. Here, we will go over the most basic types of these exercises:
- Crush Grip: crushing is the action of closing your hand around something and squeezing. This would be what you do every time you hold onto a dumbbell.
- Pinch Grip: pinching is the action of holding onto an object and squeezing with just your fingertips and not letting it drop. It can also be the act of pinching something together with just your fingertips (eg pinching a clothes pin….do people still use those?).
- Supporting Crush Grip: this is the act of supporting an object with a crush grip where you support most of the load with your fingers. Common examples are carrying a dumbbell, deadlifting or even carrying your grocery bags by the handle.
- Open Crush Grip: this is when you are using a crush grip but your fingers don’t quite touch or overlap. Fat bar or awkward object holds are great to train open crush grip. The real life carry over here would be an easier time opening jars (among other things) when your fingers are spread open. Having a strong open crush grip really comes in handy!
- Hand Extension: this technically isn’t a grip exercise in every sense of the word but it trains from the synergistic muscles to the ones you use for grip. This keeps a healthy muscle balance in your hands and wrists, which aids in preventing injury and overuse of those muscle groups. They will also help your actual grip strength improve!
Top 8 Grip Strength Exercises
Here are my 8 favorite grip exercises to use along with the type of grip they challenge:
1) Hand Grippers
Using hand or torsion grippers is my favorite type of grip exercise and is easily one of the best ways to train your crush grip. Actual hand grippers should be very challenging to close, unlike the plastic ones that some of you may have seen back in the high school weight room. The most popular brand seems to be Iron Mind’s Captain of Crush grippers, which you can purchase on Amazon or on their website for about $20 each. These grippers come in a wide variety of tensions from 60lbs all the way up to the #4 which is a 365lb close!
You can train with hand grippers by going for repetitions and max close, or even holding a close for a set or max period of time. I recommend starting with first learning how to properly set and close a gripper as training with them requires a certain level of skill and strength. You should start off with 2-4 sets of 8-10 reps with a lighter gripper and work up from there.
2) Barbell Holds
This is easiest to set up in a squat rack with the pins set just under where you would lock out a deadlift. The goal here isn’t to deadlift up the weight, rather to hold onto it, so a couple inches is totally fine.
Grab the bar with a double overhand grip at about shoulder width and then stand tall (e.g. deadlift lockout stance). The goal here is to hold for time and depending on your experience, 5-10 seconds will be perfect for most trainees. 3-5 sets should be more than enough to start!
3) Farmer’s Carries
Typically done with 2 dumbbells or kettlebells, Farmer’s Carries mean you stand up with the weights and walk a certain distance or for a period of time. This adds motion to your grip, so not only are your forearms challenged but so are your core muscles, shoulders, and hips. Try walking 20’ and progressing to 40’ with heavy weights!
4) Towel / Rope Pull UpsThese do wonderful things for your grip and if your gym doesn’t have a towel service you can pick up a couple dish towels on the cheap. Simply drape the towels over a standard pull up bar, grip them tight and perform your regular sets of pull ups. They will be challenging at first but your grip will improve by leaps and bounds! | ![]() |
5) Plate PinchesFor pinch grip I usually recommend plate pinches, so all you need are two plates that are flat on one side that you can pinch together for time (flat side out). Starting out, pinch two 5lb plates for 30 seconds for a couple sets. If that gets too easy, then move up to two or even three 10lb plates. | ![]() |
6) Fat Gripz
One of the best bang-for-your-buck pieces of equipment when it comes to grip training is Fat Gripz (affiliate link) which can be used with any standard barbell, dumbbell or pull up bar. Unless you are Andre the Giant your hands shouldn’t be able to close around the Fat Gripz, allowing you to train your open grip.
I recommend using them periodically since this grip trains fairly easily and without as much constant attention. Once or twice a month add them your standard deadlifts and try doing both double overhand and alternating grip for heavy singles. They also work really well for chin ups and dumbbell rows as well.
7) Hex HoldsHex dumbbell holds are another great way to challenge your open grip, provided your gym has hex style dumbbells. If you are serious about grip training you can purchase just the heads of the hex dumbbells from York (which they call ‘blobs.’). All you do is hold the head of the dumbbell for 30 second holds. A couple sets is all you ‘ll need. | ![]() |
8) Band or Sand Hand Extensions
As I mentioned before, these aren’t grip exercises per say, but they will go a long way towards preventing injuries as well as strengthening your actual grip.
Band extensions can be done by placing a band around all 5 fingers (or even a couple at a time) and extending your hand outward for reps or for time. You can buy professional bands for this, but I recommend just using the thick band you get on a crown of broccoli, a thick rubber band, or even one of those rubber bracelets people wear.
Another great hand extension exercise can easily be done with a bucket of sand. Simply insert your hand with your fingers closed Karate Kid style and then extend your hand open against the pressure of the sand.
In my own personal experience, grip exercises have been the simplest addition to my strength training program and have yielded some of the greatest benefits across the board. It is always important to remember that you are only as strong as your weakest link. If that is your grip, why not start there!
Hai, i listen to your advice & doing a lot of deadlifts, & it is the best type of strength exercise for me, i love it! But the problem i faced now is while i know i can do more reps, my grips start to fail first. Any tips to solve this? Thanks.
Put powder on ur grips just like u do when u lift weights and get sweaty
perhaps add this as number 9 on your list as it has worked for me for 50+ years. rep squeezing of tennis balls has quite an effect in a short time. thanks.
I work with older people typically ladies 80yrs +. Obviously this article is not aimed at them. That said I have found that working on improving grip is invaluable. In fact most of my class members come as a result of personal recommendation, mostly because they can no longer knit. 100% are knitting within 2 weeks of starting to improve their grip. I use opposition of thumb to individual fingers, Thumb across palm towards base of little finger,loose fists to stretching into stars,squeezing a small blow up ball (tennis ball to hard) between palms for chest & arm muscles & wrist circumduction,extension + flexion. This is unlikely to be of use to most of your followers but could be useful to tuck into the back of peoples minds as important in improving quality of life, all our lives.
Very cool, Ruth. Thanks for sharing!
This is why I love about this site. An awesome article, an awesome comment and the eternal presence of Marc, pointing out that keeping it human is our duty!
Thanks David!
Unfortunately your list is missing any exercises using kettlebells which do build great grip strength…..
Hey Syd,
Kettlebells are a great functional tool and definitely train your grip. The dumbbells can be swapped for kettlebells when doing farmers carry or any carry variation. One of my favorites are kettlebell Turkish get-ups. 🙂
did farmers walks for 2 min with a pair of 25lb kettle bells…holy guacamole….could feel it in my forearms, wrists and hands all the next day for sure…good for me since my grip sucks
Hey Joe,
2 minutes is a lot of time under tension! That will surely smoke your forearms!
To improve strength, try using a weight to carry a short distance like 20′-40′ or :05-:10!
Hello Stephen!
You got very interesting post here. Anyway, using hand or torsion grippers is also my favorite type of grip exercise. I will definitely try the others that you have shared here.
Let me know how it goes! Having a strong grip opens up a whole new world of strength training!
As someone who has suffered with wrist tendonitis and most recently a severe case of elbow tendonitis (both interior and exterior), which of these exercises would be beneficial to reducing the risk of inflaming it again?
My rule of thumb is always, if it hurts, don’t do it.
That said, any of these exercises will help strengthen your grip and forearms but the tendonitis is probably the effect of many other factors besides strength.
These may be overuse, poor tissue quality, and muscle imbalances to name a few. Manual therapy or soft tissue work may do a world of good as well as working with a qualified trainer to improve your posture, muscle balance and function.
The best approach is always holistic 🙂
Which grippers would you recommend? I have a gripmaster extra heavy which I like or the captains of crush? I haven’t tried coc but I’ve used that style of gripper before and didn’t much care for it. Seems like doesn’t work all fingers equally, but I admit possibly being wrong.
I like the CoC the best of all the torsion grippers I have used simply because they are durable and fairly accurate with their measurement of tension. It is a great company as well.
They make a wide variety of grippers starting at rehab (60lb close) all they way up to the CoC #4 (365lb close). The average person will never make it past the #1 (140lb close) as even that can be challenging for most people. I am currently working to close the #2.5 (237lb close) and it is very difficult I will admit. I am weighing in at 190lbs.
This type of grip will not work all fingers equally which is okay, there are other exercises for that. You can close the gripper backwards or at different set points to work different muscles or even pick up the Iron Mind finger gripper to work individual fingers.
Hope that helps 🙂
While they all work, a lot of these ideas isolate the forearms exclusively. Seems like a waste of time. Get a battle rope, or do some deadlifts – both work the forearms a ton but also the entire body. The farmers walks is one of the best ideas here. The hex (blob) holds are good too, but move them somewhere as you pinch them. Like pick them up off the ground and set them on a table or something. Much harder.
Yes, IronMind is nice, but I prefer more Hand Gripper by DESH because it has counter.
Thanks for sharing, Igor! We’ll have to check that hand gripper out.
-Kristin, BuiltLean Coach & Managing Editor