An alternative grip exercise that can be done anywhere and avoids the injury risk of climbing, is to alternately make a fist and then open your hands as far as possible while spreading your fingers apart. Start slowly and gradually increase the speed and repetitions. Be sure to have at least one rest day between sessions (I actually think two rest days is better). After a couple of weeks, you should be able to do it extremely quickly for hundreds of reps until your forearms are completely fatigued. In each workout, try to open and close your hand more quickly than the previous workout. Make your fingers look like a blur of motion. It is surprising how completely fatiguing this can be after just a few minutes.
That would require lifting my hand off the home row, which would be uncomfortable on my wrists. Playing around with it now, the motion seems to be more of a sideswipe, with a bit of muscle tone to keep the finger from just bending out of the way.
Side note - I've noticed a big improvement in general hand pain since I got into climbing regularly, and specifically starting working with a hand exerciser.
Not a silly question, you just make routes where your body-weight is 80% on your feet (but that's always the goal), warmup your hands before 5min under really warm water. If it still hurts too much stabilize your hands looks like that:
It just depends on how you are built. I tried to get into climbing for a while but the constant strain on the fingers caused more and more pain over time until I could barely use my hands. Took many years to get back to normal.
That’s why you should test a lot of advice if it works for you. Things that work for one person can be damaging for another.
Those are tendons in fingers that respond to hypertrophy for climbing, or more specifically the tendon collagen, not muscles. But that's only one strength component of climbing, probably more so for bouldering specifically, but hand grip endurance and power also require forearm strength as well. I am not sure if that would be helpful for sitting in front of a computer.
I’m not a physical therapist, so keep that in mind. The way I started was by doing hand strengthening with a grip trainer, coupled with some tendon stretches. My hands hurt the first few times, but you’ll find them getting stronger.
Be careful with these grip strength thingies. If your finger tendons are overworked, using those will exacerbate the problem. I tell from experience. It’s brutal. Tendons aren’t muscles, they don’t fatigue and recover in the same way as muscles, like from doing forearm curls.
There is some evidence that lack of sideways flexibility in the joints contributes to synovitis in climbers. A common recommendation is to regularly twist and stretch the finger joints like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMO__OrzM_U . Perhaps cracking the joints has a similar effect.
Thanks for this. I was baffled to see so many comments explaining how to "fix your grip strength".
It's not a bad thing to do, as a climber I care a lot about grip strength, but it's not a significant total-health goal. Grip strength is highly predictive partly because people don't train it, and so it represents overall fitness and muscle development. Working hand strength in isolation just breaks that predictive relationship without producing the overall health improvements that come from an active life and whole-body fitness.
I do quite a bit of strength training and have near-baby hands. Rippetoe has videos on how to hold the bar. You should never be cinching skin against skin.
> My hypothesis of what is happening is that when you're resting your arms on the table, you are preventing the free flow of blood in your forearms to your hands.
If this is what's happening, perhaps taking up indoor rock climbing would help. I know of no better exercise for improving the body's ability to send blood to the forearms and hands than rock climbing since so much of it depends on grip strength. Failing that, there are grip strength training devices (example...not suggesting this particular one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HB7V6KS) that he might keep by his desk to use when he starts getting cold fingers.
So I guess I've been "holding it wrong" all this time then. On a serious note that grip looks very stress-inducing for any average sized hand. Try stretching your thumb and fingers out all the way out like that, then tilt your palm so that it faces you. Now hold that kung-fu grip for more than 15 minutes. I prefer to do the bezel thumb and index finger hold... and then switch hands every once in a while.
Had to do the same. However, I do handstand push ups on small parallettes[0] which keeps the wrist in the similar position as doing fist push ups, but doesn't hurt my knuckles.
I would highly recommend not using gloves. They reduce the feedback you have on the bar and can lead to entrenching bad habits with regard to grip. Chalk and the technique in the video are a time-tested approach.
Have you considered strength training? Strengthening your grip can lessen the pain of arthritis in the hands. Exercises like deadlifts and bent over barbell rows will give you a very strong grip. (People assume it's all about the big muscles but grip strength is actually one of the main limiting factors for deadlift progression!)
Yes, aside from the occasional aching in the forearms and wrists the day or so after some tough pulls, working ones grip this way seems to be only for the better. Author got it right that prevention is the best approach to this kind of injury, but may have chosen the wrong method to do so.
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