If you want to avoid muscle loss or wasting time in the gym you need to pay attention to your body’s natural early warning sign. Grip strength is one of the easiest and earliest ways to detect when your training is about to become unproductive, long before the negative side effects start to become apparent. It doesn’t have to be a surprise however. In this video, I’m going to show you the best way to test the strength of your grip and hands without having to spend a lot of money or take up a lot of time.
First, why is grip so important. We know that your grip strength correlates to your performance on the bigger compound lifts. Due to the irradiation effect of a strong grip to more of the proximal muscles, as well as the stability provided to the entire kinetic chain that starts with a strong grip we will always need to strengthen our hand strength if we want to realize our true potential in the gym.
Next, the interesting thing about grip strength is that it is driven perhaps more than any other element by neuromuscular efficiency. When your body is not up to maximal function, like when tired or ill, the strength of the grip is one of the first and most direct ways to realize this. Attempting to squeeze your hand and make a tight fist when feeling this way will show you just how impossible it is to obtain max strength.
The same thing happens when you are approaching a state of under recovery. Many times, people will continue to add new things to their weight training regimens because they want to try something they’ve seen. The issue comes in when nothing else is replaced. Continuing to add more and more volume to a muscular system that already has reached it’s capacity to recovery from is a way to send your body into a deeper state of woe and make it harder for you to see new gains.
You will see this in the form of decreased strength, a lack of desire to train, a plateau in new muscle hypertrophy or strength that seems to go on forever. All of this is avoidable if you just start testing the strength of your grip on a daily basis with a 2 minute procedure that you can do with an ordinary bathroom scale. The hand grip dynamometer shown in the video is the gold standard used by physical therapists for measuring grip strength but it is expensive and as you’ll see, not needed to get a fairly accurate snapshot of where you stand right now.
Take the non-digital bathroom scale and support it on one knee. Position your hand on it so that your thumb is pointing up and your fingers wrap around the scale to squeeze it. Squeeze the scale as hard as you can and take note of the number in pounds that you generate. The key from here is now to consistently measure yourself and look for comparisons.
If you see a drop of more than 10 percent from your baseline number then you want to take action to intervene on your current workout. You may need to take a reload week. You may need to decrease the volume of your overall work or even just lighten the loads that you are using to give your central nervous system a break. Even if this takes about a week or so to bounce back to baseline, you are going to be far better off for doing this than you would have been by banging away at your workouts in this state of under recovery.
The key to avoiding this beyond just consistent measurement is to follow a training plan that doesn’t have you do more than what your body can recover from. All of the ATHLEAN-X programs available at the link below are designed to get you training to the edge but still allow your body to build itself up to be bigger and stronger from workout to workout.
For more videos on how to gain muscle and the best way to build muscle without overtraining, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube and at the link below and turn on your notifications so you never miss a new video when it’s published.
Build Muscle in 90 Days –
Subscribe to this channel here –
41 comments
NOTIFICATION SQUAD GIVEAWAY – Alright guys, I’m giving away a complete 30 Day Workout program to 100 lucky clickers within the first hour this video is published! Remember, this is NOT THE FIRST 100, but those randomly selected WITHIN the first hour the video is published. So don't b*tch if you're not one of them 🙂 Just try next time. Click the link to see if you’ve won. Good luck!
https://giveaway.athleanx.com/ytg/early-warning-sign
If you don’t win, no worries. Just be sure you have your notifications turned on so you can get to my next video quickly and try again. Good luck and thanks for being a loyal subscriber…
Plz do something about shin splints
wait a second, he squeezed 50 KILOGRAMS on the $300 hand dynamometer, but only 50 POUNDS on the $10 scale, which is less than half of 51 kilograms. unless the scale is measured in kilograms? that can't be the case because then the cheap $10 scale is literally built to measure people with a weight up to 600 pounds, which is hard to believe. he makes it seem like you can get an accurate readout from the scale, but that's clearly not the case
wait.. wtf my grip actually 10
Both showed 50, but you said one was in kg and one was in lbs?
the best method for gaining muscle is to make sure to keep creating progressive overload. every month or less, keep increasing the intensity when you are able to handle it. this is to keep it simple and easy for anyone to understand, progressive overload builds muscle over time. You also want to make sure you are performing each exercise with a good technique and contracting a much as possible. and of course, your nutrition is important.
tnx dude!
Didn't know I could lose muscle mass that way, or test it like this. Wow
You said the gauge was in Kg and it measured about 50Kg of pressure. Then you used the scales that you said are in pounds and measured about 50 lbs of force. That is not the same, it is almost half the grip. 2.2 lbs / Kg. That is 22.7Kg of grip on the scales. You might want to rethink this.
I've had repetitive strain injury in my right hand from typing and I almost lost all my grip, I could barely hold a broom
нихуя не понял, но очень интересно
My wife got a nice scale that's digital and only has pressure feet. I'll have to get me a cheap scale.
U can't lose muscles , if u don't have any. Think meme
It's so hard to comment now a Days
Follow the basics
Just subscribed!!! Love your videos man!!!
i have a stiff pinky finger but it's not painful
after starting a while to work out there will be no more stiffness after an hour after my workout itt returns
what is happening?
4:20 brilliant!
He looks like my drawing teacher who beat the shit out of me in 6th grade.
Well I mean we live to die so technically being alive is killing our gains 😝 😵🤯🤯
Please Jeff make more videos on these kind of topics. Many of us can become over-reaching for a long time and not realize it and understand the negative consequences that can happen because of it. I could really relate to what you said in the beginning.
Great dude🔥
Top tip buy a European bathroom scale and it will be Kgs 😉
Damn, I have a palm
Doesn't this type of measurement killing your gains?
My chiropractor measured my grip, then gua sha'd my forearm (which kills), then re-measured & it had already improved my grip.
Jeff's videos are some of the best, most scientifically accurate information anywhere.
Jeff’s hands look abnormally soft in the thumbnail
Not recovering is killing your gains.
247365, hows this man not dead from lactic acid build-up🤔🤔🤔😂
his shirt have some good sauce
I usually test my grip strength by squeezing a piece of coal. If it doesn't produce a diamond, I'm getting weaker.
Rhis is why we make tain in cycles, normally i do a week of recovery train after 2 months of metabolic train, rest is also very important, if 1 week isn't enough make em 2
Im a Senior my right hand on the scale hit 30, And, my left hand hit 25 lbs on the scale,"I have ulnar nerve damage on my left hand" And, Im sore today from yesterday, working out with my power twisters , dumbells etc…No gym, cause of lockout. Yet.Plus , I doubt if Im going back to any gyms anymore; Building my own home gym in my apt.
What about me? As a climber I get that fatigue literally every time I get done from climbing because my fingers are constantly working…
Hey Jeff! Im experiencing pain in my palm since I started working out a month ago. Searched the net and the closest thing I saw based on the form of pain im having is that thing they call "trigger finger". My middle finger mostly experiences the pain after I work out and when I wake up in the morning. Need help as I dont want to stop my workout just because of this trigger finger thing. Thanks a lot mann!
Lol I got up to 115 lbs with one hand on the scale
Fucking awesome dude!!!
i have no means of measuring my grip, but when i simply clench my hand or grip a piece of bundled cloth, i actually hurt my hand, either my short nails digging into my palm too much or i literally feel the muscle and skin over my knuckles almost tearing.. idk if that good or not o_o
I burst three blood vessels in my wrist doing parkour. They said it would take about 4-6 weeks for it to heal yet I can barely do 4 dips on a bar- I can still do pull us and stuff but I used to be able do do 50 military type push ups now I can barley do 15 before my wrist starts do shake and give out. They noticed nothing on the X-ray
I keep dropping things, coffee mugs etc… started noticing last months.
I do lift heavy often and then drop to high reps. So I do switch it up. This video really helped, thank you ill be more aware of over training.
2:58
When he was disappointed about his performance
😂😂😂
" …I've been higher than that as well…"
Oh dear ….you poor thing