How & Why to Train Grip Strength | Pavel Tsatsouline & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | What about specialized training for grip strength?
00:00:05.880 | I believe that if somebody's large, if they can squat 500 pounds, if they can deadlift
00:00:13.240 | 600 pounds, I don't really care if… the question is can you open the pickle jar?
00:00:17.880 | Sure.
00:00:18.880 | This is a critical…
00:00:19.880 | I just get my wife to do it.
00:00:21.960 | So grip strength is extremely important and you being a neuroscientist, you know the disproportional
00:00:29.240 | representation in the motor cortex of your gripping muscles and the forearm and everything.
00:00:34.320 | And there is another reason why grip is so important.
00:00:37.380 | So if you make a fist, if you make a very tight fist, you're going to feel the overflow
00:00:44.140 | of tension, irradiation going to other muscles.
00:00:46.940 | So pretty much by gripping tighter, you are instantly increasing your strength in anything
00:00:53.440 | that you do.
00:00:55.120 | And so a very simple example for your listeners, take some pedestrian exercise like curls.
00:01:03.340 | And do as many strict reps as you possibly can the way you normally do them.
00:01:08.100 | And then start just crushing that bar or that dumbbell or whatever that you're curling.
00:01:12.080 | You will immediately be able to knock out several more reps.
00:01:15.300 | So that makes you so much stronger.
00:01:16.640 | And again, the value of a strong wrist and grip is obviously very important.
00:01:21.840 | For whatever reason, obviously it correlates with longevity, we don't know why.
00:01:25.740 | We have no idea.
00:01:26.740 | Correlation is not causation, so we don't know whether getting a stronger grip is going
00:01:31.180 | to make us live longer.
00:01:32.180 | But statistically, it's worth a try, right?
00:01:34.980 | So one can either find exercises that train the grip in the context of developing something
00:01:42.980 | else or train the grip directly.
00:01:46.080 | So either way is great.
00:01:48.100 | So the first examples would be climbing the rope or doing pull-ups and weighted pull-ups
00:01:54.420 | on a rope.
00:01:55.420 | That's a great way to train, obviously.
00:01:57.500 | So what you do, the way you program it is, let's say once a week you climb the rope
00:02:01.100 | and a couple of days a week you do pull-ups.
00:02:03.140 | That's a good way to go about it.
00:02:04.340 | And you don't need to do anything else.
00:02:07.140 | And another example would be some exercises like the kettlebell snatch.
00:02:11.580 | When you start snatching a heavy kettlebell and you drop it from overhead, that eccentric
00:02:16.860 | loading is very, very powerful.
00:02:20.300 | And that develops grip very, very well.
00:02:22.700 | And again, right now we're talking more about what people in the grip world call the crushing
00:02:28.740 | grip.
00:02:29.740 | You know, how you squeeze something.
00:02:31.060 | There are other types of grip that they differentiated, but this type of crushing grip is what's
00:02:35.520 | going to help most athletes and non-athletes the most.
00:02:40.620 | And I will also warn you that hanging on the bar and doing farmer's carries, beneficial
00:02:48.940 | as they are for many reasons, it's not going to do that much for an athlete.
00:02:53.060 | Interesting.
00:02:54.060 | I started incorporating farmer's carries thinking it was going to improve my grip, but...
00:02:58.020 | They're healthy.
00:03:00.100 | If you look at McGill's work, he will tell you that carrying two heavy objects, it's
00:03:07.020 | going to really pound your spine.
00:03:09.740 | But on the other hand, asymmetrical carry, it appears to be very beneficial.
00:03:14.860 | Then there's another interesting example.
00:03:16.340 | Now right now, I'm not talking about grip training at all.
00:03:19.900 | Not even talking about strength training, but I'm talking about sort of a former run.
00:03:23.940 | Dr. Mike Prevost, who used to work with the U.S. Marine Corps and Navy, he developed this
00:03:28.440 | very interesting protocol and a test called the kettlebell mile, where you take a kettlebell
00:03:32.840 | that's approximately 30% of your body weight.
00:03:35.820 | And he has good reasons why it has to be that way.
00:03:40.100 | And you pretty much run with this kettlebell, and you switch hands as often as you want.
00:03:44.620 | And it's a fantastic way to improve your running posture, to develop very stabilizing muscles,
00:03:51.980 | and to improve your ability to rock, but it doesn't beat you up as much rocking does.
00:03:56.500 | Rocking carrying heavy weight, it's rough on the body.
00:03:59.220 | So it's a fantastic way to train your endurance, an additional way.
00:04:06.300 | - How heavy is the kettlebell?
00:04:07.660 | - 30%.
00:04:08.900 | Because he says when you start going heavier, it's going to affect your gait.
00:04:12.260 | So you're not really, you have to kick your hip over to the side.
00:04:16.660 | It becomes something else.
00:04:18.580 | - That's a heavy kettlebell.
00:04:19.580 | - 30% of your body weight?
00:04:20.580 | - Yeah.
00:04:21.580 | I mean, I'm 210 pounds.
00:04:23.060 | It's not trivial.
00:04:24.060 | So it's probably something like 62 pounds or something like that, 70 pound kettlebell.
00:04:29.420 | No, no, no.
00:04:30.420 | It's not trivial by any means.
00:04:31.420 | But it's also not something you jump into immediately.
00:04:34.760 | And also what's very cool is because you get to switch hands very often, you are not destroying
00:04:41.900 | your QL and other stabilizers that are contracting isometrically.
00:04:45.980 | And so what we're doing right now here is kind of a form of anti-glycolytic training.
00:04:49.100 | If your muscle contracts briefly and then relaxes, contracts, relaxes, and the contraction
00:04:54.620 | cycles are really short, you're able to avoid glycolysis, you're able to keep that muscle
00:04:59.180 | working aerobically for a long time and not beat yourself down.
00:05:02.940 | So to the listeners who'd like to try it, start by walking with a kettlebell, switch
00:05:09.920 | hands often, then eventually build up to running and obviously build up gradually.
00:05:13.980 | - Held like a suitcase?
00:05:14.980 | - Yes.
00:05:15.980 | Only, only like a suitcase.
00:05:16.980 | - Okay.
00:05:17.980 | So there's a podcast led by a guy named Kim Haynes.
00:05:21.580 | He's a bow hunter.
00:05:22.580 | He's one of the people that really brought extreme fitness and ultras to the sport of
00:05:26.700 | bow hunting and is legendary there.
00:05:28.620 | And for his podcast, he has, you carry the 72-pound rock up, it's about a thousand feet
00:05:32.660 | of elevation in the Oregon wilderness.
00:05:34.620 | And I've done it, it's hard because of the shape of the thing.
00:05:39.100 | And so you're moving it from shoulder to, you know, to football carry, to, you know,
00:05:44.780 | infant carry.
00:05:45.780 | And you're not talking about that.
00:05:47.600 | You're talking about suitcase on the right.
00:05:49.780 | Are you trying to crush the grip while you're doing it?
00:05:51.820 | - No, no, no.
00:05:52.820 | This is not developing a grip whatsoever.
00:05:54.420 | - And you're running at 10, 20 minutes, 30 minutes?
00:05:57.740 | - Well, his goal, he says run for a mile.
00:05:59.580 | That's the goal.
00:06:00.580 | And he has some numbers.
00:06:01.860 | I can give you a link.
00:06:02.860 | You can look it up.
00:06:03.860 | - Great.
00:06:04.860 | - Back to Mike Prevost.
00:06:05.860 | And direct grip strength training is great as well.
00:06:08.380 | So for example, the best products for that would be the Captains of Crush grippers from
00:06:12.980 | Iron Mind.
00:06:13.980 | Iron Mind.
00:06:14.980 | Iron Mind is the company that started a serious grip training pretty much in modern era.
00:06:19.620 | And their grippers are the golden standard.
00:06:22.400 | Some years ago, my colleague, as strong as Brad Jones and I, we decided to get serious
00:06:26.480 | about it and see what that feels like.
00:06:28.440 | And we spent many, many months.
00:06:30.280 | We were both able to build up to closing the number three gripper from a parallel set.
00:06:36.860 | So that means that gripper takes 280 pounds to close.
00:06:41.800 | And when you're using very small muscle groups, it's extremely, extremely hard.
00:06:45.520 | And the observations that we both made and other colleagues and people have made that
00:06:50.600 | once you're able to do that, everything becomes so much easier.
00:06:54.120 | However, the training itself is extremely hard.
00:06:57.420 | Because people are thinking that when you're training the grip, it's just some kind of
00:07:00.440 | isolated thing.
00:07:01.440 | You can drive the car and you can kind of squeeze this little pink thing that you picked
00:07:06.340 | up at the department store.
00:07:08.840 | No.
00:07:09.840 | When you train with a heavy-duty gripper like the one from Iron Mind, it's a full-body
00:07:15.040 | effort.
00:07:16.520 | And you need to use pretty much every neurological trick in the book in order to exert yourself.
00:07:27.880 | So for example, if you have ever seen the Sanchin stance in karate, which is a stance
00:07:36.980 | where the knees are kind of pulled inward and shoulders are pressed down, there's a
00:07:42.040 | lot of tension, everything is very, very seriously engaged.
00:07:46.720 | The toes are gripping the ground.
00:07:48.280 | So you're pretty much gripping the ground with your toes.
00:07:51.000 | You're contracting your glutes.
00:07:52.600 | You're bracing very, very hard.
00:07:54.720 | You're compressing your viscera.
00:07:56.720 | Your lat is firing and you're sending all this effort.
00:08:00.200 | The only thing they're not working is you try to keep your traps and face out of this.
00:08:05.080 | When you're directing this effort into your grip, you get just as tired from doing that
00:08:09.260 | work as from doing like heavy squats or something.
00:08:12.260 | That's remarkable.
00:08:13.520 | But if you like that, it's a fantastic thing to do.
00:08:18.140 | The motor neuron recruitment that you are describing is phenomenal.
00:08:23.380 | I have one reflection on this relationship between grip strength and longevity.
00:08:28.860 | Just a little bit of neuroscience.
00:08:31.220 | You may be familiar with this, so forgive me if you are, but for the listeners as well.
00:08:35.480 | The motor neurons that control movement of the torso lie closer to the midline on both
00:08:40.480 | sides of the spinal cord.
00:08:42.680 | The motor neurons that are responsible for more distal muscles, that is further from
00:08:48.520 | the midline, sit outside of those.
00:08:51.200 | And so as you get out to the movement of the digits, you know, the fingers and toes, those
00:08:56.500 | are the most distal from the midline.
00:08:59.560 | The rate and pattern of degeneration of motor neurons as a function of aging, even if there's
00:09:05.100 | no ALS or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or anything, is always outside in.
00:09:10.120 | We don't know why this is.
00:09:11.280 | It may relate to the presence of the enzyme SOD, superoxide dimutase.
00:09:17.560 | But it does seem that people that train their peripheral strength, they can offset some
00:09:24.860 | of that outside to in, or distal to more close to the midline degeneration.
00:09:30.760 | So I believe, and this is just a belief, that it's not just correlative, that when one trains
00:09:34.960 | their periphery, they actually can offset some of the degeneration.
00:09:38.980 | It's also the way it's mapped in the brain, which is kind of a discussion outside of here.
00:09:42.240 | We'd need to get some diagrams up for people to really conceptualize that.
00:09:45.800 | But it's also the case if you look at older people, 70, 80, 90, their calves are generally
00:09:52.580 | atrophied even if their torso is still very thick and muscular, if they did training.
00:09:56.460 | So I feel like, obviously, training the core and the torso is so key, but training the
00:10:01.140 | peripheral muscles, at least from the perspective of longevity, it makes sense why that would
00:10:05.000 | be important.
00:10:06.000 | Well, there are so many reasons, obviously, to do that.
00:10:07.560 | So I think that whether you choose to do that directly with grippers, and there are some
00:10:13.480 | other devices, obviously, unlimited number of devices and exercises, or as a part of
00:10:18.680 | another exercise, like climbing the rope, definitely strongly encouraging your listeners
00:10:23.240 | to do that.
00:10:24.240 | I'm going to try this running with the kettlebell on one side.
00:10:28.800 | I'll go out for a mile with it on the right, and then...
00:10:31.280 | Oh, no, no.
00:10:32.280 | You switch all the time.
00:10:33.280 | Switch as much as you want.
00:10:34.280 | Okay.
00:10:35.280 | Because if you try to do it on one side, you are going to pound your stabilizers and just
00:10:38.400 | pound them.
00:10:39.400 | You're not going to recover forever.
00:10:40.920 | And this way, this is one of the secrets to developing isometric endurance, is very rapid
00:10:50.480 | switching, short contractions, and brief rests, and over, and over, and over.
00:10:55.560 | That way, the muscle doesn't go into ischemia and keeps getting oxygen pretty much.
00:11:02.480 | [Music]