Mastery of Hand Strength, Revised Edition

John Brookfield | 155 pages | 2011

Grip or hand strength is a bit of a niche topic. One occasionally sees comments that grip strength is proportional to upper body strength, and the slightly less obvious assertion that grip strength is correlated to longevity. But there are not a lot of people actually talking about developing grip strength.

Brooks Kubik is one of the few, and he always includes “gut, grip and neck work” in his programs, for example with Farmers Carry or thick-handled bar dumbbells.

I am interested in grip strength mostly because I want to perform a set of 20 chin ups – meaning my hands will need to hold my ~108KG frame suspended and moving for a bit over a minute. Try hanging off a bar for a minute – if you are heavy, that is not so easy…

I came across Mastery of Hand Strength on Amazon, downloaded the sample and was quickly hooked. Professional Strongman, John Brookfield, focuses on functional movements rather than just squeezing grippers for time. In particular, I like his inventive approach to building custom training tools.

This inspired me to make my own thick-handled wrist roller using a branch I found while walking the dog. Apparently wrist rolling was a favorite of John Grimek, so I am not going to argue with that.

I am using a spare 2.5KG plate and find rolling the string up and down 3-5 times is more than sufficient to get a burn in my forearms. Brookfield suggests making the handle progressively thicker by looping a piece of duct tape around the handles each week.

In my case, the duct tape would be a good idea to minimize the bark peeling off the branch as I roll it; silver birch was probably not the best choice of wood…

Brookfield also suggests working with weighted levers such as a hammer, in both forward and backward facing positions. I cut a notch in the end of the wrist roller branch enabling it to work for both exercises – if I get serious, this will be more flexible than a hammer as I can easily add additional plates.

The cavegirl expressed some concern that the string I used is strong enough and won’t snap; I think it is fine, but I am sufficiently safety-conscious not to hold the plate over my feet…

Brookfield covers a lot of ground including thumb strength (something I have never considered) and developing strength in hand extension to promote grip strength – this is exactly the same logic as building a balanced upper body vs. focusing exclusively on bench press, and makes total sense to me.

So if you are trying for some crazy chin up challenge, want to bend steel bars, or just fancy trying something that is apparently correlated to longevity, check it out…