Grip Training And Its Importance!

 

 

 

 Grip strengthening is an often over looked, and incredibly important, aspect of self defense and martial arts training. A strong grip is needed in almost every single art to carry out various techniques with ease and efficiency. Judo and BJJ practitioners rely on their grip to hold onto, throw, and submit resisting opponents. Various Kung Fu and Karate styles require your grip strength to complete numerous standing locks and chokes. Regardless of the art you study, your grip strength could always be improved and should be trained in order to not only make your techniques more powerful, but also allow you to perform them with less effort.

 

 Grip strength training is something that can be trained in a number of ways, and doesn't need be trained on its own. Your grip strength training can actually be thrown into your strength and conditioning workouts ... or it can be done on it's own as a separate workout. There are two types of grip training you'll want to incorporate.

 

Grip Strength Endurance:

 

 With grip strength endurance, we're talking about your bodies ability to grab a hold of something, grip it hard, and not allow it to drop of fall out of your hand for a period of time. It's the type of grip that is required while holding onto a wrist during a lock or that allows you to hold onto the gi of an opponent in order to perform a throw while they resist.

 

 Kettlebells are an excellent option when looking to increase your grip strength endurance. The centre of gravity of the kettlebell is further away from the handle (unlike a dumbbell) and is always pulling away from your hand. Kettlebell work with a medium to heavy kettlebell that has a fatter handle is an excellent option for increasing your grip strength endurance. If  you're interested in kettlebell training I have a bunch of great kettlebell DVD's available from my Personal Training and Fitness Website!

  

 Another option is to simply switch to fatter bars or using fat grips during your workouts can help a lot. By using a fatter bar during exercises like pull ups/dips, deadlifts, and bench press etc. your grip will be forced to become stronger in order to hold onto the now larger surface. Another great option is to grip a towel, or a gi that has been hung over the bar during body weight rows or pull ups!

 

 

(Towel Grip Pull Ups)

 

 

Crushing Grip Strength: 

 

 Crushing grip strength refers to your ability how much pressure you can produce while closing the hand. This is the type of grip that is used during Eagle Claw attacks to the throat that crush the wind pipe or dig into muscles. This is the kind of grip we would see during some small joint manipulations or eye clawing techniques. 

 

 In order to build this crushing grip strength you'll need to actively be squeezing objects that challenge your crushing grip strength. There are numerous products on the market, such as rubber webbing, stress balls, grip strength "clamps", or small rubber "doughnuts". Most of these tools can be purchased at any local sports store and come in a variety of difficultly levels (the amount of resistance they produce).  Start with something that provides enough resistance that it's not easy, but not impossible. As you get stronger switch it up to tool that provides a greater amount of resistance.

 

 

(Grip Strengthening Clamps)

 

 

What ever art you practice, remember, you're only as strong as your weakest link. A weak grip could mean the difference between a 1st place trophy, a championship belt, or life and death. Start training your grip today so you won't regret it tomorrow!

 

 

- Tim

 

 

 

Fight Scene Friday! "Fighter In The Wind" Final Fight!

"Fighter In The Wind" is an excellent martial arts film and a sensationalized telling of  Kyokushin Karate founder Mas Oyamas life. If you haven't seen this film yet it has some excellent hard hitting fight scenes and some bad ass training sequences based on the hard body style of Karate Mas Oyama created! Here we have the final fight scene, it's well worth the watch!

My Thoughts On Iron Palm and Hand Conditioning

 Body hardening exercises and techniques have existed for centuries in various forms and can be found in many arts. Karate practitioners strike makiwara boards countless times over their life in order to harden their knuckles in hopes of delivering a more powerful one kill punch. Muay Thai fighters are known to strike their shins with bamboo rods and kick bags of varying densities in order to strengthen their shins and numb them to the pain of bone on bone clashes that occur during fights. We've all heard of Kung Fu masters (like the one in th video above!) who have masterd the technique of Iron Palm enabling them to actually shatter bricks with their bare hands! But aside from breaking boards and bricks during impressive street performance, does this sort of bone and body conditioning have a place in self defese and modern martial arts?

First off, we'll need to take a look at how this bone conditioning actually works.

 When your bones are struck regularly, over months and years, against a mildly hard surface, the bones actually suffer what are called micro fractures in what looks like tiny "beams" or "webbing" that make up the density of the bone. These micro fractures heal and actually grow back thicker and stronger than before. Thus, the bone is now stronger and more resistant to injury and fracture.

 A common myth when it comes to bone conditioning is that by striking an area of the body repeatedly on hard objects that it kills the nerves and prevents that area of the body from feeling pain. This is simply not true! This would be serious nerve damage, and that's something you don't want!
What does happen is after having stuck an area of the body enough times, over time, the nerves in that area stop sending a strong pain signal to the brain. Your body actually becomes accustomed to
the impact on that area of the body and no longer views it as a threat and treats it as something
normal. So your body is now capable of accepting more punishment to that specific area!

 So how is this useful in modern martial arts or self defese?

 One of the most common problems in modern combat sports or self defense is fracturing the hand! We see fighters break their hands all the time, and most people who get into a street fight or physical altercation end up breaking their hand on someone's skull! Without fully functional hands it becomes a little difficult to fully defend yourself or fight! With correct, well practiced and slowly progressed bone conditioning workouts it's my belief that the risk of breaking your hands/shins during a fight or self defense situation becomes drastically lowered. Your bones become stronger and more resistant to pain/injury allowing you to deliver full force stikes with a much smaller risk of breaking or damaging your bones.

 I personally think that bone conditioning and body hardening workouts and techniques can provide you with an extra edge in competition and self defense. Who wouldn't want the ability to strike at full force with a reduced chance of injury to your own body? Who wouldn't want to be able to reduce the amount of pain you feel from delivering or absorbing strikes? Now would I suggest you go out and just start striking hard objects in an attempt to condition your bones? Hell no! You should research methods, evaluate the pro's and con's and see if its something you believe in and if it's right for you.

  There are many books, videos and teachers out there to help you build your knowledge on the subject of bone conditioning, I suggest you search for them, research them, try it out and see how you can fit it into your own practice. But then again, that's just my opinion!


-Tim