But how important is grip strength to BJJ, and do you need to spend time off the mats to train it?<\/p>\n
Does Grip Strength Matter In BJJ?<\/h2>\n
Have you ever felt the impending doom when a thick forearmed BJJ player grabs your wrist, and none of your grip breaks work?<\/p>\n
And as you fight out of these grips, they dig underhooks or advance their position. But this is just one example of what a strong grip can do.<\/p>\n
Finishing submissions against strong-willed opponents can often take higher levels of strength<\/a>. For example, the stubborn BJJ player who does anything to survive the head and arm choke.<\/p>\n Yes, with better mechanics, you’re likely to finish it. Still, the stronger grip will sometimes allow you to maintain the position to finish.<\/p>\n Let’s not forget about the gi. While you curl your fingers to hold the sleeves and collars to reduce the involvement on the hands and reliance on grip, finishing various collar chokes takes a strong grip.<\/p>\n So, it makes sense to target grip training to improve BJJ performance. Especially since purple to black belts with 4 or more years of experience have significantly greater grip strength than white to blue belts with less than 4 years of experience [1]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n However, this is likely due to the time accumulated gripping opponents and gis in training. Not so much by extracurricular grip training. But that doesn’t make extra grip training any less important. It means you can give yourself an advantage as a lower belt.<\/p>\n But there’s an important point to consider before obliterating your grip in the gym.<\/p>\n That is how much BJJ you’re training and how intense those sessions are. If you’re training 5 gi sessions a week with intense rolls, then extra grip training may cause you more harm than good.<\/p>\n But if only 1 or 2 of those involve hard rolls and you’re doing no gi, then extra grip work won’t cause problems. Further, if you’re doing heavy deadlifts, rows, or pull-ups, these count as grip training. You can have your normal strength session target your grip with simple modifications.<\/p>\n Not all grips are the same. Training one aspect of grip may not translate to other types of grips. For example, pinch grip strength isn\u2019t likely to translate to crushing strength. Here\u2019s a list with examples of them all.<\/p>\n The crimp grip is your distal finger strength. Within BJJ, it\u2019s the grip you use when holding the gi sleeve when playing various guards. It\u2019s not a grip you\u2019ll train outside of BJJ.<\/p>\n The clamp grip is your finger, hand, and forearm strength. It\u2019s similar to a monkey grip where the thumb isn\u2019t involved.<\/p>\n The pinch grip is the strength of your fingers and thumb pressing together. You\u2019ll find your thumb muscle becomes crampy after training it!<\/p>\n Crushing strength is your ability to create a fist crushing whatever is in your hand. It is a dynamic action and requires an active squeeze. For example, closing a gripper.<\/p>\n The support grip is similar to a crushing grip, but it’s not about how hard you can squeeze. I’d class it more of an endurance-based grip.<\/p>\n Monkey grips involve far more of your hands and forearms. I break down monkey grips even further to open and closed hand grips. For example, bearhugging a sandbag without connecting your hands is open, while hanging from a pull-up bar with your thumb over the bar is a closed monkey grip.<\/p>\n The best thing about towel exercises is the little equipment needed to blast your hands and forearms. You can add them to a range of exercises to increase grip demands. The towel pull-up is one of the greatest tests of grip strength. Here\u2019s how to do it:<\/p>\n The towel barbell curl is an excellent option if you can’t do towel pull-ups or want to spice up your arm training. In my experience, the fat bar curl is more challenging than the towel version, but they are different hand and grip positions, so it’s worth doing both. Here’s how:<\/p>\n It may seem weird having arm isolation exercises in a grip strength article. Still, the forearm recruitment when doing curls is massive. Add the fat bar, and you’ve turned it into a brutal grip exercise. Here’s how to do it:<\/p>\n Using a fat bar or fat gripz shows significant increases in forearm activation when deadlifting versus using an Olympic bar [2]<\/sup><\/a>. It seems logical since the diameter you must grip increases dramatically. Here\u2019s how to do it:<\/p>\n This is the ultimate monkey grip exercise. You must wedge your hands under either side when lifting a heavy sandbag from the floor. It’s impossible to connect them when the sandbag is heavy enough. So, to pick the bag up, it\u2019s all hand, forearm, and biceps strength. Here\u2019s how to do it:<\/p>\n The sandbag bearhug carry is my favorite carry exercise for BJJ because of the grip versatility. You can keep the monkey grip as you deadlift or transition to S grips, Gable grips, or seatbelt grips. Here’s how to do it:<\/p>\n If there’s a grip exercise I hate doing the most, it’s the plate pinch. My thumb muscle almost cramps when doing these hard. It’s important to use plates with a flat side like the original metal 45 lb plates. You can do these with one or two hands for time. Here’s how:<\/p>\n This is not an exercise I use as I feel you develop this strength through lots of BJJ and no thumb gripping the pull-up bar. However, to strengthen your fingers, use this and the plate pinch for a potent combination. Here’s how to do it:<\/p>\nDifferent Types Of Grip For BJJ<\/h2>\n
![\"Grip](\"https:\/\/rollingaroundbjj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Grip-Strength-For-BJJ.jpg\" "\\"Grip")
<\/span><\/p>\nCrimp<\/h3>\n
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Clamp<\/h3>\n
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Pinch<\/h3>\n
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Crushing<\/h3>\n
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Support<\/h3>\n
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Monkey<\/h3>\n
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Best BJJ Grip Exercises<\/h2>\n
Towel Pull-Ups<\/h3>\n
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Towel Barbell Curls<\/h3>\n
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Fat Bar Curls<\/h3>\n
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Fat Bar Deadlift<\/h3>\n
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Sandbag Deadlifts<\/h3>\n
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Sandbag Bearhug Carries<\/h3>\n
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Plate Pinch<\/h3>\n
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Plate Clamp Lift<\/h3>\n
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Best BJJ Grip Strength Workout<\/h2>\n
Day 1<\/h3>\n