Strategies For Incorporate Grip Strength Training For Your Spartan Race

shutterstock_237777994-1While there are always a few surprises you will face in every Spartan Race, you will always have some certainties.  You know you will have to run, you know there will be hills, you will have to throw a spear, etc…Sometimes it is difficult to specifically train on some of these obstacles, but many have a few characteristics in common.  I recently did an informal survey  in a Spartan Facebook group on what people wish they would have trained more of after they completed a race.  You can see the responses here:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/WestCoastSpartan/permalink/1711219025828197/

There were mainly two answers.  People wish they trained more hills and they wish they did more grip.  For this post we are going to focus on the grip work.  The majority of people fail grip related obstacles and even when they do complete them, they are left wiped out for other obstacles.  Grip strength is obviously crucial for your Spartan success, but not all grip exercises are not equal.  Variety is a must.

Now one mistake we often see is people hit the gym and start doing wrist flexion and and extension exercises.  While I don’t think these are bad exercises, they don’t carry over as well for the type of grip strength you need for a race.  If you enjoy doing them, have at it, but there are more specific grip work methods you can work on.

Below of the different types of grip strength you need, the obstacles that will require them, and a few drills you can work on.

 

  1. Crush Strength

    • Remember when you went to your dates house for the prom.  You reached out to shake your date’s dad’s hand and you were left with a shriveled up, throbbing hand.  My friends and I refer to this as man’s strength.  Don’t worry ladies, you can have it to.  This is the strength you can create between your fingers and palms, as in shaking hands or squeezing a ball.

  2. Pinch Strength

    • Pinch strength is going to be similar to crush strength, but here it is the strength you can create between your fingers and thumb

  3. Support Strength

    • This final type of grip strength involves holding onto something for a long period of time.  Think hanging from a monkey bar or carry heavy weights at your side.

As you probably guessed there is no single type of grip strength you should train.  Instead you must incorporate exercises that involve all of them.   You will need both crush and pinch strength on the Z-Wall.  The Monkey Bars and Multirig requires support strength and crush strength.  The Hercules Hoist involved crush and support strength.  The sandbag carry can involve all of the above.  So we can see the importance of training all of these types of strength in our programs in order to master each obstacle.

If you are like me, you probably don’t have hours to spend in the gym, so you can’t do a ton of direct grip work.  But there are simple things you can do to help improve your grip strength while performing other exercises.  You don’t even need a multi-rig set up in your back yard (although it never hurts).

While yes, you can pick up heavy stuff and carry it or hang from stuff to improve grip strength.  But sometimes we need variety to keep the workouts fun.  Try some of these exercises and techniques to incorporate grip training into your current training program.

 

Use Competing Exercises

Often when putting together a workout program you might pair noncompeting exercises together.  For example you might see a superset of push ups and lunges.  This way you can keep the intensity up since there is not much crossover between these two exercises.  This is very beneficial for many reasons, but sometimes it is a good idea to throw in competing exercises in terms of grip work.  For example you can try a triset of heavy barbell deadlifts, pull ups, and farmer’s walks.  All three of these exercises involve grip work.  More specifically they involve support strength.  You will notice with each exercise your grip will likely be the limiting factor.  Try this circuit out and you will see what I mean.  Perform 4 sets of 6 barbell deadlifts, 6 pull ups, and a 20-30yd farmers walk.  Rest 30-60 seconds and repeat for 4 rounds.

 

 

Add Pinching Exercises

As previously discussed, pinching strength is a key component to grip strength.  Going around pinching people won’t help thought with your grip or your social life, but you can add pinching to many traditional exercises.  Really any exercise where you hold weights by your side, just substitute 1 or 2 plates.  This will decrease the load that you typically do for the exercise, but you still work different movements while training your grip.  Here are a few samples:

 

Squeeze A Ball

Squeezing a ball, whether it be a stress ball or tennis ball, is a great exercise for improving grip strength.  But as an added benefit, add a ball squeeze to any single arm movement.  This not only improves grip work, but you will find that it helping improve total body tension.  This will create more core stability and ultimately help you push more weight and reduce injury.  Kettlebell exercises work really well here.  This is a simple circuit you can do with a tennis ball and a kettlebell:

 

Use Ropes and Towels During Pulling Exercises

Similar to the plate squeeze exercises you can add ropes or towels to just about any pulling exercise.  You still get the benefit of the pulling exercise but not we significantly challenge your grip strength in all three ways.  The sky is the limit with your creativity here, but below are a few examples to get you started.

 

Use Hanging Drills As An Active Rest

This is a simple yet incredibly effective way to incorporate more grip work, specifically support grip strength.  So instead of just standing around while you rest between sets or circuits, do different hanging drills as you recovery.  You could start with a fully extended hang.  This is the easiest place to start and probably best for an active recovery.  But you could also through in single arm hangs (alternating arms), 90 degree hangs, or chin above the bar hangs.

 

All of these strategies are simple to add to what you probably are already doing.  That is the best part.  You don’t have to add any additional time to your workouts if you can’t spare any more time in the gym.  Just add a few of these and you will be smiling as you run past everyone doing burpees after the multi-rig.

 

Aroo!

 

Mike Deibler MS, CSCS, SGX