Building strength in the fingers, hands, wrists and the
entire lower arm can make you or break you in a workout or anything you need
your hands for. We need our hands to build things and create things so is it
essential to build a level of strength, flexibility and dexterity that helps us
in our everyday lives? I believe so. There are many ways to build a solid steel
grip but there are other ways to keep the tendons strong and durable no matter
what you do.
The lower arm area all the way down to the fingertips is the
most neglected parts of the human body in exercise. You won’t get by much with
just wrist curls and a few isolated circular movements; you are learning to
build that area by squeezing, flexing, extending, push, pull and working the
individual fingers. It is important to master all these factors because if you
don’t have strong hands, you won’t be able to pick up a weight no matter how
big your arms it’s not going to happen. What if you need to fix something with
a wrench or screwdriver and don’t have the hand strength to twist and turn,
that would suck and if you work using those types of tools you won’t be at your
job for long.
When I talk about building eagle claws, I’m not just
referring to training the entire lower arm to claw somebody in a fight or
having great strength to do amazing things, I’m referring to creating great
strength, flexibility and dexterity no matter what you want to do with your
life. It doesn't matter if you’re a musician, athlete, entertainer, carpenter,
construction worker or landscape artist, you will have great attributes if you
gave yourself the chance to learn. How about curing Carpal Tunnel and never
needing to wear a brace ever again, be less prone to injury and be able to heal
quicker with exercises that work the entire region and not just that area but
the shoulders, the arms and the trapezoids.
One of the best conditioning programs ever assembled is the
use of Animal Exercises. You can learn how to move like an animal in the wild
and teach your body to burn fat, build muscle, increase the strength in your
organs, tendons, muscles and so much more for only a few minutes a day. Now how
about amplifying those exercises once you have mastered them, begin to do some
on your fingertips, this type of training alone can build crazy strength in
your lower arm in ways you can never get from machines. Having a solid steel
grip and power in your lower arm can help increase your strength in other
areas, it’ll help you pick up weights better, and it’ll help your grappling
game much more efficient and if you’re into Arm Wrestling, look out because
you’ll be ripping those guys up in no time.
Getting started is like everything else, begin where you’re
at and progress from there, work certain exercises that keep the blood flowing
and ready to go. Spread exercises throughout the day so you can keep that
energy flowing and use certain tools to help the grip. One of the coolest tools
I like for building grip strength is called Fat Gripz, these babies will take
thick bar training to a whole new level and you can attach them to just about
any dumbbell or barbell but if you’re a bodyweight guy, you can attach them to
your pull-up bar to increase the difficulty. I use these for building strength
and endurance in Arm Wrestling using my lifeline Chest Expander. Progress is a
very important factor because once something becomes easy; you want to continue
to challenge yourself so you increase the difficulty by a small percentage.
Even Rock Climbers have to progress otherwise if they jump in too soon, they’ll
fall off much quicker and that can mean certain death so it’s important to
build progression.
No matter how you slice, strong hands equals a strong body
because when you have the strength to pick up really heavy weight or be able to
twist off certain objects with a wrench or even pick up groceries for that
matter, your hands are the tools that open doors to everything you pretty much
do. Even doing certain Feats Of Strength requires strong hands, you can build
as much strength as you want in every other area in your body but if you’re
hands aren't up to par, you’re pretty much done. Complete the whole package by
training as many areas as possible including your lower arm, you’ll be amazed
how weak or strong your hands are certain situations so my suggestion is make
those hands work for you and build a foundation to have the strongest and most
functional hands as possible.
