Gaining Grip Strength

health

May 3

If you use Kettlebells to build arm, torso, and shoulder strength, please know you are building up your grip strength, too! Grip strength is important because it determines how many grocery bags you can carry at a time, how long you can hold onto your perilously hanging friend over the rocky cliff, and how many pounds of pressure your hand can create to crush a can, cut some tin, or shake a hand!

There’s an interesting academic medical study — Resting blood pressure reductions following handgrip exercise training and the impact of age and sex: a systematic review and narrative synthesis — directly linking improved grip strength with lowering blood pressure; especially if you are an older woman. Squeeze a ball at 33% of your total grip strength for a couple of minutes with a few minutes of rest. Do that five times in a row, five days a week, for twelve weeks, and you’ll begin to see real results!

Or!

You can use Kettlebells! Swinging a Kettlebell preternaturally improves your grip strength, and while you may not be able to Swing a bell for a full two minutes, in my experience, you can get similar results in lowering your blood pressure by using a Bell instead of a squeeze ball — because a Bell is interactive, moving, and demands concentration, and greater grip control. A Farmer’s Walk with your Kettlebell is a grip strength improvement technique; as is the suitcase carry, and the Deadlift. Hey, just picking up a Bell is a grip strength tester!

How do you evaluate your grip strength? You can purchase, as I did, a — Digital Hand Dynamometer Grip Strength Measurement Meter — and learn how many pounds of pressure you can muster over time. I can squeeze about 80lbs, but in the image below, my strength is about 70lbs because my arm is bent to get the photo. I grip the Dynamometer with palm up, and then palm down, and test both measurements on each arm.

Here’s the important lowdown on the academic medical paper detailing the grip strength blood pressure reductions:

The majority of researchers prescribed moderate intensity handgrip training with four to five repetitions of 2 to 3-min handgrip contractions at 30% MVC either bilaterally with 1 min of rest between alternating hands [40, 43, 45, 46, 48, 50, 52, 53] or unilaterally with 1–5 min of rest between contractions [36, 38, 41, 46, 47, 54,55,56,57]. Other handgrip training designs were more rhythmic (intermittent) with grip durations of 1 to 10 s at either 20% MVC [44], 30% MVC [58], 40% MVC [42, 58], 50%MVC [37, 58], 60%MVC [51, 59, 60], or maximum effort [39, 49]. Three studies used “sham” exercise conditions consisting of 4 × 2 min at 5% MVC [41, 50, 61], which for the purpose of this review have been included as a training condition.
Training was most commonly prescribed for 8 weeks, with a range from 4 to 12 weeks. None of the studies reported any adverse events from handgrip exercise, including those researchers who enrolled clinical populations.

The conclusion of the study is also quite — gripping:

This systematic review found that handgrip exercise training at least 4 weeks in duration was effective in reducing resting BP among men and women with various health statuses. Furthermore, it appears that on average the greatest reduction in resting BP occurs among aged women. Reductions in BP were comparable between younger (< 55 years) and aged (> 55 years) study participants. The findings of this review may be relevant for clinicians and individuals looking to manage BP through non-pharmaceutical interventions and may be helpful in informing future studies that seek to refine and implement handgrip training programs designed to best meet the needs of specific cohorts.

Grab a bell, squeeze the handle — live a little bit healthier!