Summary
Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews break down eight practical strategies for building grip strength and explain why grip is critical for overall training performance. They highlight that the average college-aged male today has the grip strength of a 60-year-old man from the 1980s, and that grip strength is one of the most reliable single predictors of all-cause mortality, correlating with mobility, osteoporosis, hormones, insulin sensitivity, and cognitive health. The eight hacks include: ditching wrist straps (which took one host a full year to overcome the grip deficit), using chalk for better connection, squeezing the bar hard on all lifts for neural irradiation, training heavy singles/doubles/triples, practicing isometric holds, adding 1-2 sets of grip work at the end of every workout, training the wrist extensors to prevent elbow pain, and avoiding training to failure. Favorite exercises include farmer's walks (especially with a trap bar up to 450 lbs), pinch grip plate holds, kettlebell holds for time, towel pull-ups, rice bucket work, and reverse wrist curls for extensor balance.
Key Points
- The average college-aged male today has the grip strength of a 60-year-old man from the early 1980s, largely due to decreased manual labor and hand use
- Grip strength predicts all-cause mortality better than most single blood test metrics and correlates with mobility, bone density, hormones, and cognitive health
- Ditch wrist straps — they create a grip deficit that can take a year to correct, and 99.9% of lifters don't need them
- Use chalk (liquid chalk for gym-friendly use) on all lifts to improve connection to the weight and eliminate slipping
- Squeeze the bar hard on every exercise, including presses — this creates a neural irradiation effect that improves force production through the entire kinetic chain
- Train heavy singles, doubles, and triples to build pure grip strength rather than just grip endurance from higher rep work
- Add 1-2 sets of grip or forearm work at the end of every workout, stopping short of failure to avoid overtraining
- Train wrist extensors with reverse curls to balance the flexor-dominant pattern and prevent medial/lateral epicondylitis
Key Moments
College men today have the grip strength of 1980s seniors
The average college-aged male today has the grip strength of a 60-year-old man from the early 1980s. Grip strength predicts all-cause mortality and correlates with mobility, osteoporosis, hormones, insulin sensitivity, and dementia risk.
"Should I use wrist straps? So it's this common question, this common problem that I think that people encounter. Now, the other side of this is there's not a lot of stuff out there, right? So there's not a lot of good information out there on how to train your grip. Very few programs have grip or forearm training programmed in the workout. So it's like, well, what do I do for my grip? Do I just hold on to heavy weights? Like what are the exercises? What does that look like? Um, so there's a lot of that. And also, I mean, the reality is, and you said this, you're basically touching on this, Justin, your hands connect you to the world. Um, so a strong grip is like, you know, that's, that's the, uh, last line of defense, if you will, if your grip can't hold something or your wrist is too weak to press something, I don't care how strong your chest and shoulders are, your back is, your bicep, it doesn't matter. You're dropping it. You can't do it. It just doesn't work. Um, so it's a very important part of the body, just like any other part of the body is. is um but it's a neglected part of the body and people always trip out when their grip gets stronger how much it improves everything else because everything else gets easier it's part of the kinetic chain it's also i mean i'm surprised you didn't bring up your uh the the i was i don't know if it was a poll or a study they did on the uh grip strength of like a 20 year old man today compared to like a 60-year-old man like in the 40s and 50s. No, in the 80s. Oh, the 80s. It was in the 80s. That recent. Yeah, the average college-aged male today has the grip strength of a 60-year-old man in the early 80s. That's how much... And the reason why they use grip strength is because grip strength is actually a quite reliable... It's not perfect, of course, but a very reliable way to test overall body strength. So if you have a weak grip, you probably have a weak body. If you have a strong grip, you probably have a strong body. Now, of course, it's not perfect. There could be issues with someone's hands, they could whatever, but for the most part, and it tells you a lot and it's easy to test, right? It's an easy test. You just squeeze and grip something."
Why you should ditch wrist straps and how long it takes to recover
Wrist straps prevent the grip from developing alongside other muscles. One host took a full year for his hands to catch up to his back after removing straps. Studies show straps change recruitment patterns the body learns to rely on.
"I took off the wrist straps and it took me a year for my hands to catch up to my back. I had trained my back with wrist straps for so long. My hands were so far behind that I had to go way lighter."
Heavy singles, doubles, and triples for pure grip strength
Training heavy singles, doubles, and triples builds pure grip strength rather than the grip endurance that comes from higher rep ranges. Combining this with an axle bar amplifies the effect.
"And so I started training singles, doubles, and triples. And one of the things I vividly remember like noticing aside from watching my strength go up more in those big lifts than I'd ever seen was my grip. I noticed my grip strength when I probably just from just lifting really, really heavy weight one to two to three times. Because, you know, you like, like when I was giving the example earlier of lifting, you know, above 350, when I start getting above five reps in that rep range, it's just hard for that long of a period of time to hold on to but by doing something as tense and as heavy as you know 400 pounds one time pulling up like that boy my my grip strength shot up really because one is is training more for strength endurance and one is training for just pure strength yeah so when i'm doing high when you're doing and most people when they they don't train their grip and they're like oh it's fine and then they test it like i need to get it stronger they may have okay strength endurance because they hold onto the weights quite a bit, but just like building strength in anywhere else in the body, that low rep stuff will build like real low, you know, that, that grinding strength. And that comes from the low rep stuff. So, you know, doing a double with heavy weight builds strength differently than doing, you know, 12 reps with lighter weight. Both of them build strength. One is more strength endurance. One of them is more pure strength. That's what you noticed. You'd never trained your grip with pure strength."
Farmer's walks and rice bucket training as top grip exercises
Farmer's walks are the top grip exercise, lighting up the entire body and serving as a workout primer. Rice bucket work from old kung fu and OCR training develops fingers independently and works both flexors and extensors.
"you take a bucket and you fill it with dry rice, put your hand in the bucket and you open and close your hands in that rice. And this, you know, I did some research to say, where did this come from? And by the way, this really works the hands and it works the fingers independently. It's really awesome."
