I’m fortunate enough to have one of the U.S. top grip strength competitors as a neighbor. Just met him a few weeks ago and have been talking to him about getting together and training because up till now I’ve mostly trained by myself in a home gym. I’m running 5/3/1 and was curious if on sundays I did some grip work with him just how taxing that would be on my body.
Grip is one of my weak links so its something I’d greatly like to improve but not at the risk of hindering my other workouts. I’ve already added in another squat day on saturday where I do more volume with less weight just to grease the groove since i’m coming back from a hip flexor injury.
So my question is, for anyone that does a lot of grip work how taxing is it on your body? Does it take long to recover from?
I found grip work like calves, you use those muscles every day to live, adding in heavy weights should not impact you and in fact, a stronger grip translates onto all of the big lifts. The only place I found it hurt was on my deadlift and I just moved my grip work around to be on the day I did deads and recovery was fine.
Once a week shouldn’t be a problem but of course depends on what you guys will be doing and how you will be responding. The only time I really thrash myself (except for injuries) is when I run intense programs for multiple weeks and even then it doesn’t really affect my lifting that much.
Have fun crushing.
I talked to him briefly and he mentioned, farmers carries, nail/rod bending, grippers, 2" axle deadlifts, ripping phone book, pinch plate holds, towel pull ups, static holds. I’ve never done much grip work outside of standard deadlifts and farmers carries so it should be fun to try. He also has some strongman equipment like atlas stones that i’m really looking forward to trying my hand at.
I’ve trained mostly with the interest in powerlifting but also wouldn’t mine trying out strongman. So the grip training world is pretty foreign to me, its cool the things this guy does and some of the training he uses. I never realized how big the underground world of grip training was.
Here is his youtube link he’s part of if anyone is interested in checking out some of the grip competitions and training methods. http://www.youtube.com/user/JeddJohnson