grip strength

Hey EF Fam,

This one thing is direct marker of your biological age.

When you increase this one thing, you know you are
increasing your health.

As this one thing decrease a quicker death rate linked to this one marker increase.

“Hey! What’s up? I wanted to do a video on a specific topic that I think is very important for every single one of our clients specifically but actually in general as a population because this is something that is a biological marker of your age. This tells us your biological age and it has to do with grip strength.

Grip strength is extremely important. They’ve done numerous studies on it but in one study specifically in Perspective Urban and Rural Epidemiological (PURE) study was done 140,000 people and they follow them for over 4 years and what they found is that over those 4 years if your grip strength went down about 11Lbs your likelihood of dying of any cause increased by 16%, dying of heart disease increased by 17%, having a stroke increased by 9% and having a heart attack increased by 16% as well. So it’s directly linked to your biological age but those are just some cues, those are just some studies to give you insight as to your grip strength directly related to your body because really it comes down to your nervous system and it also comes down to the strength that you have inside your body so how much muscle you have and that’s what they figured out in the long run… is that really it comes down to how much strength you have, how much muscle you have.

But, the most important part that I want to speak to you about is while you are in training. We see a lot of people who are picking up the weights incorrectly, you’re doing pullups incorrectly and they’re not engaging their nervous system by using the grip of their hands and so I’m just gonna show you a couple of things that will dramatically change and alter the way that you move and the strength… Essentially, how much force you use in your muscles. For example, shoulder press. (Please see the video) If I stand here with my arms open and I press up. I’m neuromuscularly not really engaging my shoulders. As soon as I squeeze these kettlebell all of a sudden I have a direct connection from my brain all the way through activating my whole nervous system right even the fight or flight aspect of it, the sympathetic nervous system to press up. And you can test this out on your own. If you open up your hands and you do the exercise I all of the sudden feel way more unstable, I don’t feel as strong as when I squeeze and then press up. It’s a completely different feeling.

So with the deadlift, this is taught as a specific aspect of the deadlift when you walk up to the bar or the kettlebell or whatever it is you prepare yourself mentally but also physically. And one of physical ways of doing it is squeezing as hard as you can as soon as you squeeze it fires up the nervous system and your strength skyrockets so we hear people go to pick up the weight, pick up the deadlift and they say “Oh I can’t do it…it’s too heavy!” most of the time it feels it’s too heavy because they’re not engaging the grip strength to the maximum capacity. So when you go into a deadlift, you want to squeeze the bar like you are about to pick up 500 Lbs whether if you’re picking up 500 Lbs obviously that is what you want to do but even if you are picking up a hundred pounds or 60 Lbs because the engagement of your nervous system is what ultimately gives you results. So someone could pick up a kettlebell and do 10 reps without really engaging their nervous system meaning they’re not firing the muscles and the muscle fibers so they’re not getting the results as if someone with the same exact weight, the same range of motion but they’re squeezing the kettlebell and engaging their nervous system. So that’s where results come from, the more you connect your mind with your body the more you engage your nervous system, the more results you’re going to get.

And so same with the pull up bars, we have the pull up bars over here. Alright, So let me show you real quick. We see some people… they won’t grip the bar tight and they actually have their hands hanging off with no thumb and so this is a good way to training if you are doing something like rock climbing  but for the most part we want to see grip squeezing and then the pullup becomes totally different and much easier.

So, in conclusion every single exercise for the most part except for a kettlebell snatch should be full activation of your grip even the bench press how you bench press, you want to squeeze and bring the weights together. So going forward, I would ask you to consider fully engaging your grip and even practicing strengthening your grip in general and you can do that with farmer’s carry, we do that in training where you hold the weights and then you walk with them and you’re squeezing the weights to engage your nervous system. And that’s how you gain and improvement grip strength. I hope this helps and any questions or comments go ahead and leave below.”

Committed to your success,
Ian

Ian Hart is a Body-Mind Transformation expert, the creator of EarthFIT Training Systems, co-creator of BACK PAIN RELIEF4LIFE, and founder of BEAUFORTPERSONALTRAINING.COM and MYBACKPAINCOACH.COM. Ian and his team help people get into optimal shape in the safest, fastest and most effective way possible, using cutting edge science.