One of the obstacles that many people fear in any OCR race are the monkey bars.
There are four important elements of fitness that are required to master the monkey bars. Those four elements are Grip Strength, Momentum, Core Stability and Power.
This article focuses on Grip Strength and how it can be improved
Often overlooked, your grip strength plays a key role in injury prevention and overall strength development
Why should you train grip?
According to Ratamass et al, “pulling exercises such as dead lifts, bent over rows, and pull-ups all greatly depend upon the athlete’s level of grip strength. Therefore, resistance training to improve grip strength may be critical to athletic success in several sports”
Often overlooked, your grip strength plays a key role in injury prevention and overall strength development. Working on this will improve your monkey bar technique, but also others like walls, rope climbs and even most gym based exercises.
So how can you improve your grip?
There are numerous ways of increasing the strength in your hands and forearms with the use of gym equipment and your own body weight. Here are a few:
Body Weight Hangs
Using a Pull up bar or any high bar hang for as long as you can up to a minute. Repeat for 3 sets
To advance this movement release the grip off one hand and hold for up to a minute, repeat on the other side.
Use a lower bar, with feet on floor and hands gripped onto the bar, keep the body straight from head to toe.
Don’t be afraid of calluses, they help protect your skin from blistering and cause less pain in the hands whilst gripping
Using a kettlebell, dumbbells or a famers walk frame, complete 20 metres without dropping the weight or complete a static hold for as long as possible. Repeat for 3 sets
Using heavier weights or bigger grips
Use smaller weights
Hold a plate in each hand for as long as you can for 3 sets
Hold a heavier weight
Hold a lighter weight
Using a fat bar as part of your usual workout makes the forearms work even harder
pulling exercises such as dead lifts, bent over rows, and pull-ups all greatly depend upon the athlete’s level of grip strength
This simple but effective piece of equipment isolates the forearm to perfect grip strength
Add more weight
Use less weight
All the exercises above can be incorporated into and alongside most workouts. Also working with more pull based exercise (eg. pull-ups deadlifts etc) your grip will be tested and therefore progress in time.
Use of Gloves?
One thing I personally don’t think necessarily helps are the use of gloves. They reduce the amount of contact you have with the bar and interfere with your grip.
Don’t be afraid of calluses, they help protect your skin from blistering and cause less pain in the hands whilst gripping. If they are getting too big simply file them down.
If you suffer with sweaty hands, simply use chalk whilst training to soak up any sweat and grease to keep your grip at its best.
At the end of the day like most things practice makes perfect!!
More Grip Workouts