Grip Training with Hand Grippers

Hi dudes
Iv never head a grip issue in training (powerlifting mainly) but I recently tore my meniscus and am waiting on surgery so aren’t doing a lot of compounds that require grip so am keen to keep mine strong.
Does anyone know what sort of strength hand grippers would be decent? I don’t want to buy one that is like way too easy but at the same time I don’t want to buy one that i can’t close for a couple reps at least… Anyone got any advice on this? Or do I just take the blow and splash out on like 3-4 different grippers?
Thanks

Hey man,

Sorry to hear about your meniscus.

My grip’s always been a weak spot and I found the most effective hand grippers are the tougher ones. They seem to work better in developing the strength of the forearm and overall grip capability. The easier ones pump a lot of blood into the forearms but don’t really help with strength.

IMHO, find ones that you can close for 5-6 reps max and start working with them. For instance do 5x5 sets. Also use them slowly.

Hope this helps! Have a speedy recovery!

Hey George,

Thanks it’s a pain but in just seeing it as a bump in the road in my journey for strength!

Thanks for the recommendation there, I will go for one that I can close in the 5-6 rep range and then as I get to be able to manage some decent volume on that I might go for the next one up!

Thanks for the response man

Hey dude,

I tore my meniscus and ruptured my ACL back in Oct and got surgery in Nov. I logged the entire recovery process post op. You might find it useful to come up with some ideas on how to train

As for your question on grippers, I used them a lot, and a good idea is to get 2; light and heavy. This will allow you a LOT of variety vs just 1. You can do dropsets, where you go for max reps with the heavy, and then chase it with the light. You can do timed holds with the heavy one. You can pre-exhaust with the light and then go for the heavy, etc.

For most trainees new to grippers, I suggest the trainer and the 1 from Captains of Crush.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and if you want this to carryover to holding onto weight, focus more of your energy on timed holds. Just closing the gripper builds crushing strength, but that doesn’t really have a lot of carryover to holding weight.

Hey buddy,
Awesome post there great info for me, really appreciated.
Just ordered the 2 grippers you recommended and will use them in the fashion you mentioned.
Cost me just under £30 so not too bad for some decent training tools!
Did you end up getting much hypertrophy in your forearms or was it purely grip strength?

Really sorry to hear about your knee dude that must suck.
I will check out your log, I’m feeling determined to not let this bother me too much as far as mentally so I’m sure seeing your log will help others that!
Good luck with your recovery and thanks again!

Nothing to be sorry about; I’m fully recovered and better/stronger than ever. Just like you said; it’s a bump in the road, and ultimately an opportunity to improve weaknesses and shift the focus of training.

I wasn’t really looking for hypertrophy to be able to say one way or the other if it worked. I put on 12lbs after my surgery since I was at an all time low bodyweight, so everything grew pretty big.

That’s awesome man and pretty inspirational for me right now. Will be following along with your log as I have a lot of questions regarding the recovery process and it may give me some answers.
I get you, my BW is dropping also because of not being able to train properly so I would expect I will experience something similar to that on my recovery!