In case you didn’t see it, a couple weeks ago Minnesota Viking Jared Allen performed one of the most impressive (and hilarious) tackles of a quarterback. Allen was busy tangling with an offensive lineman as Eli Manning was scrambling to get the pass off. Instead of going AROUND the lineman (Beatty), Allen just reached around him, grabbed the back of Manning’s jersey and held on. And held on. And held on. For at least four seconds until he got leveled by another Viking. You can see the whole clip here.

It was glorious. And a perfect excuse to talk about a subject I’ve wanted to right about for some time: training for grip strength.

That Crush Grip

For those who haven’t been indoctrinated into the world of grip training there is only “grip strength”, but really there are several different types of grip strength which don’t necessarily carry over to one another. The type of grip strength I’m going to cover today is crush grip, or the closed-hand crushing strength of the fingers. Other primary types of grip strength include pinch grip, support grip, open hand grip, and levering.

When people think of grip strength they think of crush grip. This is the type of grip Jared Allen was testing when he clamped his fingers down on Manning’s jersey. This is the type of grip involved in closing a gripper, and is the one people who have been training on barbells for years are the strongest at naturally. This type of grip strength, unfortunately, carries over poorly to the other types of hand strength. Yours truly happens to have an above-average crush grip (and so of course it’s my favorite type of grip to train) due to years of heavy deadlifting, but my pinch grip for example is abysmal.

One of the very best ways to train the crush grip is with a torsion spring gripper. These grippers, like the famous IronMind Captains of Crush series, are legitimate strength tools unlike the silly little plastic-handled grippers you can buy at any sporting goods store and do hundreds of repetitions with. Closing a difficult torsion spring gripper requires skill and strength.

Enter Adam T. Glass, a man whose hands are as immalleable as the iron that forged them. I am lucky to have learned everything I know about grip training from Adam having spent years training with him. It is a longstanding joke that if you hang around Adam long enough you will eventually get into grip training. I denied it for a long time that I was “into grip” but when I realized I had competed in more grip contests than any other type of contest I had to eventually concede that I was into grip training.

But I have digressed, so let’s get back to the topic at hand. The torsion spring gripper needs to be set properly in the hand to maximize the leverage to close it. Simply putting it in your hand and closing it is called a no set or a table no set grip. This is rarely used, especially in contest, partly because it depends greatly on the size of the hand. To properly close a gripper to a set standard (often a parallel set, or a 25mm set), you “set” it in the hand using your other hand to partially close it to a set width. I’ll let Adam explain how to do it:

When Adam says he is not an expert, he’s being modest. He’s on a very short list of certified Captains of Crush who have closed the CoC #3 under strict judging criteria.

If you want to get started with some grippers, I can strongly recommend my buddy (and neighbor!) Matt Cannon’s company Cannon Powerworks. Every company has a slightly different way of rating their gripper difficulty beyond the level number or name they assign it. For example, the IronMind CoC #1 is rated at 140lbs. Unfortunately, no one really knows how these ratings are determined and how they compare to one-another since every company differs. Plus, there is always variance from one gripper to another. Grip fanatics therefore developed the RGC, or Redneck Gripper Calibration, rating system to consistently measure them in the same fashion. Matt is an old hand at running his RGC rig, so he can measure your gripper before shipping it out to you for a few bucks extra. This is really critical if you’re serious about your grip training because you could have a significant difference between two of the exact same model gripper. It’s ends up being like thinking the bar is loaded to 130 when it’s really 150. I don’t get anything for recommending Matt and his site, I just would like to see him do well with his side business.

Just getting started? Get a gripper rated (via RGC, not manufacturer rankings) well below 100, and one right around 100. You will be able to progress the easier gripper until the ~100 one is easier. Then make the jump to something in the 120 range. I like the IronMind grippers, and the GHP are also very nice pieces of equipment. For about $50 you can make a significant impact on your grip strength.

Why Train Grip?

Grip training may actually be the highest payoff training you will ever do. If the benefits of being able to hold on to things is lost on you, I’m not sure there is much hope of convincing you. Glass was always fond of pointing out how it’s unlikely that you will ever have strong hands without a strong body, but there are lots of strong bodies without strong hands. Jared Allen could push and pull all the iron in the world, but if he couldn’t keep his hand closed on that jersey, that sack wouldn’t happen. If you can’t hang on to that bar, your deadlift isn’t going to happen no matter how strong your legs are.

In next week’s installment, I’ll cover my least favorite type of grip strength: pinch gripping.

One of the aspects that makes my style of training, the kind taught in Off The Floor, at The Movement Minneapolis, or in the Fitocracy PR Every Day coaching group so different is that there are no specified rep schemes. For some people, this represents a massive change in their way of thinking. If you have been accustomed to simply following a number of reps to do, it’s a tectonic shift.

The reason I don’t give reps is not that I am lazy or have some religious belief that prevents me from using numbers. The reason I don’t give reps is that I don’t know how many reps you need to do. I could tell you too few and I’d be doing you a disservice preventing you from maximizing your potential. I could tell you too many and you’d be pushing past your limits risking injury. As a coach I can sometimes judge when someone is going too far, but there are a myriad of sensations that you are privy to well before I can see when something is going wrong.

Believe it or not, you do know. But, it’s entangled with beliefs and a lack of understanding of the underlying reasoning.  I think that widening the foundation of your understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish with various rep schemes can help people feel more comfortable in leading themselves.

Why do we do different rep schemes?

Put simply, different numbers of reps cause different physiological stresses. In the chart below I’ve noted some of the properties of doing different numbers of reps. I used Brad Schoenfeld’s 3 main mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy and added two of mine own that relate more to strength adaptation without significant hypertrophy. These are gross generalizations and not to be taken as literal absolutist statements.

A caveat that I should note is that the rep ranges are based on an assumption that you are using a weight that you only able to do for that number of reps before reaching into excessive effort. You don’t get high connective tissue stress if you deadlift 5lbs for 3 reps unless you are an infant.

As you can see, low reps cause more of some types of phsyiological stress and high reps cause more in others.

Knowing what physiological stresses you’re going to bring about is about half of the puzzle. The other half is knowing the trade-off and the relationship between the different reps.

The biggest one I’d specifically like to address in this article is volume.

In case you’re not familiar with this term (you should be), volume is the total amount of work done. You can look at it per movement, or per workout. If you deadlift 225lbs 10 times you have 2250lbs of volume. If you deadlift 100 times you have 22,500lbs of volume.

There is a bell-curved relationship between low reps, moderate reps, and high reps. See the chart:

Described verbally: at your lowest reps per set (singles) you will do very little total volume, perhaps only a few reps total. At the very highest reps per set, where you are hitting muscular failure on the first set, you may do a lot of reps but the resulting metabolic stress and muscular damage will prevent you from accomplishing much volume in subsequent sets.

Somewhere in the middle lies the sweet spot. There is a point at which the metabolic stress is mitigated, mechanical tension is moderated, and muscle damage is limited. This is the spot where you could seemingly do endless amounts of volume.

On either side of this point you also have a wide berth where you can achieve large amounts of training volume. These are the areas of the curve I encourage people to take advantage of and increase their training volume. Most people I work with are shocked at how much training volume they are actually capable of and likewise how little their current training programming actually consists of. Once you start doing 25,000lb workouts on the regular, you start realizing why you weren’t progressing with 8,000lb workouts. You are literally capable of so much more.

Programming physical training is a lot of science, with a hint of art in how you actually apply it. I think my friend Nick Tumminello said it well when he said “Training is the art of expressing the science.” As you’ve hopefully learned above there are different ways to accomplish the same thing with each variable affecting the others slightly. If you want to learn more about how to customize and individualize training programs from one of the very, very best keep in mind that Eric Cressey’s High Performance Handbook is only on sale through today. When someone has built their entire business on some of the very best athletes in the world getting results, coming back, and sending their teammates you can bet that you are going to learn something valuable. Plus, apparently Eric has extended the offer to win a trip to Cressey Performance so that is still up for grabs.

Go peep the High Performance Handbook.