The Top 7 Exercises to Improve Grip Strength, According to a Personal Trainer
Want to live longer and lift heavier? Grip strength is the key.
Want to live longer and lift heavier? Grip strength is the key.
When it comes to snagging PRs on big lifts—like deadlifts—overall strength matters, but it might be your grip strength that’s holding you back. A strong grip is key for pushing yourself in the gym, which means bigger strength and muscle gains.
But more importantly, you depend on your grip all day long. Whether you’re holding on to your dog’s leash for dear life, or dead set on carrying all your groceries in one trip, you need a strong grip. Grip strength is essential for building and maintaining functional fitness, or your ability to move safely and efficiently throughout the day.
Grip strength also says a lot about how healthy you are (1). A strong grip is key for a longer lifespan and a better healthspan (or the quality of life in those extra years). The weaker your grip strength, the older your biological age, per a study published in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Muscle (2). A weak grip has also been linked with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and all-cause mortality (3, 4, 5).
And unless you’re working on your grip strength, you’re probably losing it, according to celebrity personal trainer Daniel McKenna, NASM CPT. “One study found that the average grip strength loss is 2.2 percent per year (6). That may not seem like much, but after five years, you’re already at an 11 percent loss,” he explains.
Ready to level up your grip, stat? Here’s McKenna’s approach for strengthening your grip from every angle.
Daniel McKenna is a celebrity fitness trainer, founder of the Irish Yank Society, and creator of the Irish Yank Fitness App. With nearly a decade of experience, the Irish Gaelic football athlete turned celebrity trainer is on a mission to help as many people as possible find joy in daily movement. His unique approach to fitness combines foundational training techniques with positive reinforcement to help clients see and feel noticeable changes.
“Simply put, grip strength refers to the ability to hold things in your hands,” says McKenna. From hanging on a pull-up bar to nailing a perfectly firm handshake, grip strength is the measure of the muscular strength or the maximum force your forearms and hands can generate to grip onto things.
While having a strong grip in general is important, McKenna points out that there’s actually three types of grip that should be on your radar:
Improving your grip comes with a load of benefits. A strong grip has been linked to:
Nearly any exercise variation where you’re hanging from a bar, holding or moving weight with your hands, or making use of your hands and fingers—like squeezing a ball or pulling a rope—can improve hand and grip strength. Here’s a few of McKenna’s favorite exercises for a stronger grip.
The simplest way to challenge your forearms and improve grip strength is lifting heavy. This is where compound exercises excel. McKenna points out that compound exercises—like back squats, rows, chest press, and deadlifts—involve more muscle groups to get the job done, meaning you can handle heavier loads. Heavy barbells, kettlebells, and dumbbells will put your grip to the test, and simultaneously improve it as you progress the load over time.
To further challenge your grip strength, try mixing up your grip during deadlifts or rows by making use of a neutral grip (palms facing your midline), overhand grip (palms facing towards you), underhand grip (palms facing away from you), or mixed grip (one towards you and one away). Different grips will call on different muscles in your forearms and hands, strengthening your grip from different angles.
Barbell curls aren’t only good for massive bicep gains, they’ll build your grip, too. McKenna loves that barbell curls are ideal for challenging your biceps with even more weight than dumbbells. With barbell biceps curls, your biceps are doing the major work of moving the weight, but your hands, wrists, and forearms are taxed as they fight to control the movement. Slow down the eccentric phase (or the lowering portion) of this move, it’ll help you build even more strength and size in both your biceps and your forearms.
How to:
Hammer curls look a lot like bicep curls, just with the dumbbells shifted to a neutral grip. This change may appear minimal, but it puts more work on your forearms (which are key for a stronger grip).
How to:
Pro tip: To further challenge your forearms, try Zottman curls, a bicep curl that involves pausing at the top of the curl and rotating your palms away from you before lowering. This rotation is key to developing forearm strength.
Sled pulls are a great way to challenge your overall power, strength, and stamina. Plus, they’ll target your back, shoulders, biceps, and the whole battery of grip muscles (forearm, wrist, and hand muscles). Sled pulls are unique in that they demand a full range of motion to get the sled from point a to point b, and they’re typically done for distance or time—maximizing both mechanical tension and time under tension—a combination that can help boost gains (7).
How to:
Few exercises build grip, arm, and upper body strength like climbing a rope. It’s simple, it’s effective, and it will kick your butt. A standard rope climb makes use of both your arms and your legs to power up the rope, to really challenge your grip McKenna encourages you to use your arms as much as possible. Most gyms or CrossFit gyms now have climbing ropes at easy access. If you don’t have access to a rope, try towel pull-ups with an alternated grip to mimic the act of climbing.
Battle rope exercises are great for strengthening your grip, as battle ropes tend to be thicker than a standard barbell or dumbbell. That extra width (and weight) of the rope forces your forearms and hand to work harder to hold onto the rope. Bonus: Rope slams will build your coordination, agility, and cardiovascular strength, too. Aim to get through three to four sets of 30 seconds each, increasing the time (or your effort) to level up the intensity.
How to:
Pull-ups will increase your grip strength; but if you aren’t quite there yet, a dead hang will do. Dead hangs are incredible for shoulder health, and can help improve your posture. They’re also one of the best ways to improve your grip, specifically your support grip which helps you hold onto things. Simply hang from a pull-up bar as long as possible. Aim to hang for 15 seconds and work your way up to longer holds.
How to:
Farmer’s carries are simple. Just grab a weight in each hand, hold it at your sides, and walk. The aim: walk as long as you can while carrying the weight. Like dead hangs, farmer’s carries specifically strengthen your support grip. After loading up farmer’s carries nice and heavy you’ll be ready to carry groceries for hours.
How to:
There’s only one way to know for sure if your grip is slipping: Measure it. Physical therapists and personal trainers measure hand grip strength with a grip strength dynamometer, which is a good tool to test where you’re at and track grip strength gains. (You can snag one on Amazon for around $25). Average grip strength scores vary by age, sex, and your dominant hand, but the best numbers to compare to is your own over time.
That said, you don’t need to measure your grip strength to feel the improvements of building it. You might notice you can squeeze out a few more reps on the pull-up bar, that your grip strength is no longer the limiting factor during barbell rows, or that carrying your laundry up and down the stairs isn’t the mission it once was. All of the above are grip strength wins, per McKenna.