“ Grip Strength When what keeps us going most in our daily routine and activities is our two hands, how stupid it is most of us to always be hitting only those chest and arm exercises in the gym and not thinking a bit about how to increase the strength of the hands that do almost all the work necessary for us.”
What is Grip Strength?
Grip strength is the amount of strength or force you have, when you clench your hand around any object. It tells how much you can hold any object firmly and securely.
The measurement of it directly indicates the overall health and strength of the body of a person. The strength you hold in your hands, wrists and forearms, gives an idea about the other health factors related to a person’s body.
The device used to measure a person’s grip strength is a hand dynamometer. It is a handheld device, which when squeezed helps in measuring the person’s overall grip strength.
Benefits of Grip Strength in Daily Life Activities?
A strong grip strength benefits you with lots of things. Some of them are:
- Ability to pull heavier weights
- Picking those heavy groceries.
- Better ability to perform household works
- Improved sports performance
- Ease in daily exercising and gymming
What is the Role of Grip Strength in Your Overall Health?
Reduced Risks of Falls and Fractures
Imagine climbing the stairs and then suddenly you trip and fall…..what would be your first instinct?
YES! Putting your hand in front of you to balance yourself. However, what if your hands won’t even be strong enough to balance and prevent you from falling or at least minimizing the damage to your other vital body parts? That is where a strong hand grip strength matters, to prevent those fractures and damages that happen because of a fall.
Even in elderly people, it takes the strength of their hands when they try to sit up from somewhere and move to another place.
Improved Quality of Life
As mentioned above, the ease and better performance in daily life activities is also possible when you have a good grip strength in your hands. It will not only make things easy and comfortable for you but also will be time saving when you are able to do double the work for the same time period.
Lift Heavier Weights
How heavy of the weights you can pull is directly dependent on the grip strength of your hands.
It is linked with the fact that someone with more grip strength needs less force to move an object. The same applies with those heavy weights.
Reduces Risk of Cardiovascular Disease
Lower prevalence of cardiovascular diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and heart attacks, is surprisingly associated with grip strength of a person.
This is correlated with exercising and keeping yourself healthy and fit. When you exercise daily for your muscles, hand grip strength, etc., your overall health also improves. The reason why, a person with high grip strength has reduced levels of triglycerides, reduced blood glucose and insulin levels, higher HDL levels and healthier blood pressure when compared with that of a person with low grip strength.
Longevity
Hand grip strength as an indicator of longevity? YES! It is true.
People who have low grip strength are found to have more risk of premature and all-cause mortality, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and even cancer.
When a person focuses on building muscle strength and hand grip strength, the overall body also starts to repair and this leads to slow aging and hence longevity in a person. This is the reason why people with high grip strength tend to have high longevity.
How Can You Improve Your Grip Strength?
There are many ways you can improve and increase your grip strength and tension not, they are easy to do even at home.
So, let’s begin:
- Look for those high rods at your home. Now what is the key here is the strength of holding…..hold that rod and just hang there above the ground. Give your all to just keep on holding that rod as long as you can. With time, the time period of you being able to hang there will increase and so does your grip strength.
- Grip trainer, ever saw them? These are small handheld tools that focus on using the hands muscles to crush. When you try to put both the apart parts of the device together by crushing and applying force, it slowly increases your grip strength too with time.
- You do have those heavy groceries or buckets full of water at home right? Yes, pull them up. It will definitely be hard for the first few times, but believe us it will slow;y and subtly increase your grip strength.
- Do those wall push ups and hand stretches. They definitely work and increase hand grip strength.
