Issue 036

April 2008

BY ZACK EVEN-ESH

Developing your hands for strength, endurance and health requires paying attention to detail. If you injure your hand or hands as a combat athlete, you can expect a serious decline in your performance: your gripping will be weak, your punches will be weak, your ability to grab the gi or the fl esh of your opponent will be weak. Being weak spells disaster for any combat athlete. Stronger hands result in healthier hands. Healthier hands are more resilient and less likely to get injured. Utilise the grip training methods in this article and you will notice an improvement in your performance regardless of the type of combat you engage in. If you train with the gi a lot, then be careful of working your grip excessively as this can lead to overtrained hands. Believe me, when your hands are overtrained, they fatigue much faster and your grips feel much weaker. Usually one or two hard grip workouts each week is plenty for a combat athlete. You will adjust frequency according to how often you train in combat and how you personally feel the day after grip training.

Here are the critical movements I would like you to

implement into your grip workouts:

1) Hex dumb-bell holds / pinch gripping is a great way to strengthen your fingers and your ability to hold an arm or gi for extended periods of time. Spread your fingers apart and hold for as long as possible, usually in the 10-30 second range.

2) Rope and gi training (any variations): attaching thick ropes to the sleeves or lapels of a gi is a great way add extra grip work with your specific gear or for improvising thick handled type training. All rope training is excellent: rope climbs, rope pull ups, rope curls with rope looped through a weight, hand over hand sledge or car pulls with a rope are all just a few ideas, yet very powerful to implement.

3) Wrist rollers are excellent for developing lactate tolerance and muscular endurance in your gripping. If your forearms get pumped to the max too quickly and too easily your hands will feel like jello and you will be helpless with your weak grips! These are super basic and have been around for ages yet not enough people use this simple training tool.

4) Wrist strength: when the wrists are weak your forearms cannot flex, which ultimately means you will have a weaker grip. One of the benefi ts to tire fl ipping is that not only is this a very powerful full-body exercise, but it requires tremendous effort from the

wrists, forearms and hands! No questions about this exercise, this is a must-have exercise!

5) Crushing: hands that can crush are hands that can choke, submit, strike and do plenty more damage. The good ol’ Captains of Crush grippers are great for developing a mighty grip and there are countless options to meet your strength needs. We do these with heavy grippers for 3-5 reps per set or lighter grippers for extended time periods and / or high reps. There is no need to overwork your hands, especially since they get a brutal workout through mixed martial arts, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, wrestling, judo or whatever sport you choose. Choose one or two different movements at the end of each strength and conditioning workout one or two times a week. The frequency of your grip training will depend on your combat training, as this is a lot of grip work in itself, as mentioned previously. The key is consistency in training and effort. Do this and you will

transform your hands into deadly bear claws!

Zach Even-Esh is a Performance Coach for combat athletes located in New Jersey, USA. Check out Zach’s powerful information for Combat athletes at UndergroundStrengthCoach.com and ZachEven-Esh.com.