If you are in the martial arts community should know that hand and grip strength are a very important aspect of their fighting capabilities. Be it on the offence when you need to use your hands for punching, where your hands need to be tough to prevent injury to yourself and to cause more damage to the opponent. Or on the defense when you need to be able break the grip of your opponent and then apply your own crushing hold.

You should do the more common workouts for grip training such as the hand grippers, pinch grip and wrist curls but due to the nature of fighting your wrists will twist at different angles and giving them extra attention will really help. For the wrist, hold a weight plate with your fingers on the flat side and your thumb on top. With your palm facing up place your wrist on your knee or even better on the edge of a table. Rotate your wrist so you move the plate in a circle, rotating in both directions. You may have to experiment for a weight that suits you but do not make it easy.

For leverage, try something heavy like a sledge hammer. Hold your arm at your side and just rotate the hammer upwards then lower back down using only your wrist. You can move your grip up and down the handle to make it harder or easier. If you do not have a sledge hammer you can try something else, like a long 2 x 4 or broom. For a variation hold your arm out in front of you and rotate the weight in circles using your wrist.

For most people the wrist is the weaker area of the arm, if you can strengthen this you will be way ahead of the compitition. Having a stronger wrist will really present it’s benefit when you start doing twisting motions and you are still able to hang on.

Go to Grip Strength for more info on how to improve your grip strength. Tim Archbold’s interests are Fitness Training and Health.