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Hand Grips for hand strength?

juffs

18-Feb-2009
9:35:49 PM

Can anybody give me the low down on Hand Grips?
- Are they beneficial and in which areas?
- How do I use them?
- Will they give me arthritis?

pmonks

19-Feb-2009
6:18:44 AM

Not sure which Hand Grips you're thinking of, but I've found that a hangboard works wonders for contact strength. I live by the rule of not using it more than twice a week and so far have remained injury free (touchwood!).

Juffs

19-Feb-2009
6:56:10 AM

The metal springy ones with two handles that sits in you hand.

StuE

19-Feb-2009
8:30:03 AM

The ones you can buy from sport shops are pretty useless for anything but warming up. If you mean business, go for the Captains of Crush by Ironmind but beware as they are seriously hard (the No. 1 is hard, No.2 extemely tough, No. 3 is near impossible for mortals and only 3 or 4 people in the world have closed the no.4). They certainly increase your pinch/general hand strength but don't do much for your finger strength. If you want to improve your finger strength, you time is much better invested in a good fingerboard routine (and sticking to it!)

gfdonc

19-Feb-2009
9:57:15 AM

I used these (mostly while in the car) about 2 years ago. After a few weeks I had nasty tendon problems in the forearms (elbow). My massage therapist told me to hide them in the cupboard and they've stayed there ever since.

Fingerboard is better.

dougal

19-Feb-2009
10:48:33 AM

They're great (if your goal is to tear telephone books apart).

psd

19-Feb-2009
10:56:06 AM

My understanding is that any hand/forearm strengthening stuff is extremely specific to the movement you're training - even to the point that you have to train a particular hold if you want to get strong on that kind of hold - so I would have though squeezing a springy thing will help you squeeze the springy thing harder but not hold an edge or a sloper etc etc

dalai

19-Feb-2009
11:04:52 AM

On 19/02/2009 psd wrote:
>My understanding is that any hand/forearm strengthening stuff is extremely
>specific to the movement you're training - even to the point that you have
>to train a particular hold if you want to get strong on that kind of hold
>- so I would have though squeezing a springy thing will help you squeeze
>the springy thing harder but not hold an edge or a sloper etc etc

Exactly!

My comments from an old topic on pinch grip

Squash balls and other squeezing training tools might give you a pump, but aren't effective climbing training tools. They rely on isotonic muscle contractions (where the muscle shortens) where as hands in climbing utilize isometric contractions (where no shortening of the muscle occurs).

Open hand hangs off various size edges is a good example of specific isometric training outside of actually climbing

StuE

19-Feb-2009
11:16:47 AM

There is no doubt that the very heavy duty grippers (COC/Heavy grips etc) can help pinch weakness, but not much else. Plenty of folk who have trained properly with them can attest to this.

tmarsh

19-Feb-2009
11:45:57 AM

Or to put it another way, the likelihood of chronic injury is far more probable than any improvement in climbing ability. Don't bother. Save your money and buy Neurofen Plus and beer instead - two things which have been scientifically proven to improve climbing.

pmonks

19-Feb-2009
5:19:52 PM

Age is pretty good for climbing too, as in "the older I get, the better I was".

bl@ke

19-Feb-2009
6:01:22 PM

i got a gripmaster a little while ago and its not to bad. the medium strength one is to easy though i reckon the hard one would be just about right

Juffs

20-Feb-2009
6:54:40 AM

A friend of mine thinks that hand grips can bring on arthritis!

zumojugo

20-Feb-2009
7:18:26 AM

And blindness.

pmonks

20-Feb-2009
10:46:30 AM

I've heard that as long as you sit on your hand first to make it numb, you're ok on the arthritis front.

Cranky

20-Feb-2009
11:13:20 AM

Don't forget to change hands after counting to 100.

stonetroll

20-Feb-2009
12:12:48 PM

A couple of sqeazes on the hand grips is O.K. as part of warm up. But what is much better and delivers a greater range of exercise, is a bucket full of rice grains.

With a bucket full of rice you can get a wide range of resistance.
By sticking your hand in the rice and sqeazing and kneading and generaly trying to crush the rice you exercise grip muscles.

Then trane the opposite way by opening your hand in the rice and the resistance strengthens all around the hand muscles. Exercising the hand opening muscles doesn't help grip but it does balance the hand and help in the prevention of injury.

You can get a 10kg bag of rice on special for about $10.00 and keep it in a bucket with a lid.

mattjr

20-Feb-2009
1:41:42 PM

Yes, I agree totally! A bucket of rice can get you a long way, increases strength and stamina... but I tend to stick it in my mouth rather than my hands in it(no not the whole bucket at once, try boiling it first in small amounts, stick it in your mouth 3 x a day you'll see results in absolutely no time).
My gripmaster gathers dust, I seem to be able to inflict finger injuries upon myself without having to resort to using it.

Eduardo Slabofvic

20-Feb-2009
3:14:37 PM

On 20/02/2009 stonetroll wrote:
>With a bucket full of rice you can get a wide range of resistance.
>By sticking your hand in the rice and sqeazing and kneading and generaly
>trying to crush the rice you exercise grip muscles.

this reminds me of that scene in "Enter the Dragon" where there are all these guy thrusting their hands on
buckets of gravel to harden them up. We obviously need the same training school to open up for
climbing.

IldrtherBM9 could be the evil guy that runs the place, Simey could be Bruce Lee, Stugang could be the
embittered black guy, and I'll be the bankrupt golfer. Hands up who wants to be the big guy that gets
wasted in the first round, and we also need a token Kiwi......"Wot's yar shtale?"

There are 19 messages in this topic.