Grip Strength Training: The Best Exercises and How Often

Grip strength training exercises build the crush, support, and pinch strength that limit deadlifts, pull-ups, and farmer's carries — and grip strength itself is one of the simplest measurable predictors of long-term health. A weekly routine of dead hangs, farmer's carries, and loaded carries or pinch work, done 2–3 times per week for 8–12 weeks, produces measurable gains in most healthy adults.

Why Grip Strength Matters Beyond the Gym

Grip strength is unusual among fitness metrics: it is cheap to measure and has been studied at a huge scale as a general marker of health, not just hand function. A 2017 meta-analysis of 42 prospective cohort studies covering more than 3 million participants (Wu et al., Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, PMID 28549705) found that people with the lowest grip strength had a 41% higher risk of all-cause mortality (HR 1.41) and a 63% higher risk of cardiovascular disease (HR 1.63) than those with the highest grip strength. The dose-response relationship held: every 5 kg decrease in grip strength was associated with a 16% higher all-cause mortality risk and a 21% higher cardiovascular risk. No significant link was found for cancer risk specifically.

A 2020 umbrella review of systematic reviews (Soysal et al., Journal of Sport and Health Science, PMC8167328) reached a similar conclusion from a different angle: higher baseline handgrip strength was associated with a 28% lower all-cause mortality risk (RR 0.72), a 16% lower cardiovascular mortality risk (RR 0.84), and a 24% lower disability risk (RR 0.76).

None of this means gripping a dumbbell harder makes you live longer — grip strength is a marker of overall muscular and neuromuscular health, not a magic intervention on its own. Full-body strength training, of the kind that also builds your legs, back, and chest, likely explains much of the association. But grip strength is one of the few strength qualities worth training directly, both for what it predicts and for what it unlocks in your other lifts.

The Three Types of Grip

Most grip strength exercises train one of three distinct patterns, and a well-rounded routine trains all three rather than only the one that shows up most in your main lifts.

Crush grip — closing the fingers around an object, like squeezing a hand gripper or gripping a barbell. Most relevant to deadlifts, rows, and pull-ups, and the pattern that improves fastest simply from normal strength training.
Support grip — holding a load for time without letting go, like a farmer's carry or a dead hang. Most relevant to carries, static holds, and grip endurance under fatigue. This is the pattern that fails first in a long deadlift set or a max-effort carry.
Pinch grip — holding a flat object between the thumb and fingers without wrapping around it, like pinching a weight plate. The weakest of the three grip types for most people, and the one most often neglected because it rarely gets trained by accident.

Most lifters over-develop crush grip relative to pinch grip simply because deadlifts, rows, and pull-ups all reinforce crush. If your grip routine doesn't include at least one pinch-specific exercise, you likely have an imbalance you aren't aware of yet.

Best Grip Strength Training Exercises

Dead hangs. Hang from a pull-up bar with an overhand grip, arms straight, shoulders relaxed but not fully "dumped" into the joint, until form breaks down. Dead hangs train support grip directly under bodyweight load and are the simplest entry point — no equipment beyond a bar. Start with 3 sets to a hard stop (not total failure, stop with 2–3 seconds of hold left in reserve) and build toward 30–45 second holds before adding weight with a dip belt.
Farmer's carries. Pick up a heavy dumbbell or kettlebell in each hand and walk for distance or time, keeping the torso tall and shoulders back rather than letting the load pull you into a shrug. Farmer's carries combine support grip with core stability and total-body tension, and scale easily by load. 3–4 sets of 20–40 meters or 30–45 seconds is a practical starting point; progress load before you progress distance.
Plate pinches. Pinch two weight plates together (smooth sides out, so there's no rim to hook fingers around) and hold for time at your side. This is the most direct way to train the usually-weak pinch grip. Start with light plates (5–10 kg total) for 3 sets of 15–20 seconds, and resist the urge to curl the wrist to help — the point is the fingers and thumb, not the forearm.
Towel pull-ups or towel dead hangs. Drape a towel over a pull-up bar and hang or pull from the towel ends instead of the bar itself. The unstable, thicker grip increases crush and support grip demand significantly compared to a standard bar, and doubles as a low-cost fat-grip substitute.
Fat-grip work. Thick grip attachments (or a towel wrap) on dumbbells, barbells, or pull-up bars increase grip demand on lifts you already do — rows, curls, farmer's carries — without adding a dedicated exercise. This is the most time-efficient option if you're already training 4–5 days a week and don't want to add extra sets.
Wrist curls and reverse wrist curls. Rest your forearm on a bench with the wrist hanging off the edge and curl a light dumbbell through a full range of motion, 2–3 sets of 12–15 reps for flexion, then flip the grip for extension. These isolate the forearm flexors and extensors that underlie crush grip strength and help correct the flexor-dominant imbalance most lifters develop from pulling movements.
Barbell holds. At the top of a deadlift, instead of dropping the bar immediately, hold the loaded bar for an extra 10–20 seconds before releasing. This is the cheapest way to add grip volume to a session you are already doing, with zero extra setup — just don't do it on your heaviest working sets, where a failed grip mid-lift is a safety issue, not a training stimulus.

Grip Strength and Your Other Lifts

Grip is very often the limiting factor in a deadlift long before the legs, hips, or back give out — this is why competitive powerlifters use mixed grip or hook grip on their heaviest attempts, and why straps exist. If your deadlift stalls because the bar starts sliding out of your hands before your legs are fatigued, that's a support-grip problem, not a leg-strength problem, and it's solved by the exercises above, not by more deadlifting alone.

The same applies to pull-ups: if you can do more reps with straps than without, your back and arms have outpaced your grip, and dedicated dead hangs will close that gap faster than more pull-up volume will. Farmer's carries also carry over directly to loaded carries in daily life — groceries, luggage, moving furniture — which is part of why grip strength correlates so strongly with functional independence in older adults.

Programming: How Much Grip Work Is Enough

A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis of hand-focused strength training in healthy adults (Akbaş et al., Journal of Clinical Medicine, PMC12524766) found that strength-only training protocols produced a moderate, statistically significant improvement in grip strength (effect size g = 0.47), while combining strength work with balance/proprioception training diluted the effect. Effective protocols in the review typically ran 2–3 sessions per week, using isometric or isotonic handgrip exercises, for 2–4 weeks for a short-term effect and 12–13 weeks for a fuller training response. Progressive resistance based on a percentage of 1-rep max or maximum voluntary contraction outperformed fixed-load protocols.

Practical translation for a lifter, not a lab study:

Weeks 1-2: 2x/week — learn dead hangs and farmer's carries, build a baseline hold time without chasing failure.
Weeks 3-6: 2-3x/week — add plate pinches or fat-grip work; progress load or hold time by roughly 10% per week.
Weeks 7-12: 3x/week — full rotation of crush, support, and pinch work each week; track hold time and load, not soreness.

Add grip work at the end of a session, after your main lifts — pre-fatiguing your grip before deadlifts or pull-ups will limit those lifts, not help them. On days with heavy pulling (deadlifts, rows, pull-ups), one grip exercise afterward is enough; save the fuller 3-exercise rotation for a day without heavy pulling in the program.

Common Mistakes

Training grip first. Doing heavy dead hangs or farmer's carries before your main compound lifts pre-fatigues the exact muscles that keep a deadlift or pull-up set safe and effective. Grip work belongs at the end of a session or on a separate day.
Ignoring pinch grip. Crush grip improves fastest because it overlaps with normal training (deadlifts, rows). Pinch grip usually needs dedicated, separate work to catch up, and most lifters skip it entirely.
Chasing soreness instead of progression. Forearms recover slowly from delayed-onset soreness that isn't proportional to strength gain. Track hold time and load, not how sore you feel the next day — grip DOMS is a poor progress signal.
Skipping the extensors. Wrist curls (flexors) get most of the attention; reverse wrist curls (extensors) are usually neglected and can create an imbalance that increases elbow strain over time, a pattern sometimes described informally as grip-related "tennis elbow."
Maxing out every session. Grip strength, like any strength quality, responds to progressive overload with planned recovery — not to testing your absolute limit every time you train it. Reserve true max-effort holds for periodic testing, not weekly training.

Do You Need Grip-Specific Equipment?

No. Every exercise above works with equipment most lifters already have. A pull-up bar covers dead hangs and towel hangs; two dumbbells or kettlebells cover farmer's carries; a pair of weight plates covers pinch work; a resistance band or light dumbbell covers wrist curls. Spring-loaded hand grippers (like Captains of Crush) are popular but train a narrow range of motion and are easy to cheat with body English — they're a reasonable add-on once you've built a base with dead hangs and carries, not a starting point. If you train at home with limited equipment, prioritize dead hangs and farmer's carries first: they deliver the largest share of the training effect for the smallest equipment investment.

Tracking Grip Progress With MyTrainer

Grip strength gains are slow and easy to lose track of by feel alone — a dead hang that felt hard at 20 seconds in week 2 should feel easier by week 8 even at 35 seconds. Log your hold times, carry distances, and pinch-plate loads as a custom exercise in your MyTrainer program, and check your progress trend the same way you'd track a squat or bench PR. If your grip strength stalls at the same numbers for three consecutive sessions, that's the deload signal to back off volume for a week rather than force through it.

FAQ

Can you actually train grip strength?

Yes. Multiple systematic reviews confirm that dedicated hand and forearm strength training produces measurable, statistically significant improvements in grip strength in healthy adults, typically within 4–12 weeks of consistent training (Akbaş et al. 2025, PMC12524766).

How long does it take to build grip strength?

Most training studies show measurable improvement within 2–4 weeks, with fuller gains developing over 12–13 weeks of consistent 2–3x/week training. Grip strength responds like any other strength quality — it needs progressive overload and recovery, not daily maxing out.

How do I improve grip strength for older adults specifically?

The same exercises apply, but training effects are actually larger in older adults than younger adults in controlled studies (Akbaş et al. 2025 found effect size g = 0.97 in older adults vs g = 0.26 in younger adults) — grip training is one of the higher-return strength interventions later in life, and it's directly tied to the mortality and disability risk reductions discussed above (Soysal et al. 2020, PMC8167328).

What is a good grip strength benchmark?

Grip strength varies widely by age, sex, and body size, so absolute numbers matter less than your own trend over time. Rather than chasing a generic "good" number, track your own dead-hang time and farmer's-carry load month over month — consistent progress matters more than comparing to a population average.

Will grip training help my deadlift?

Often, yes — if your deadlift is limited by the bar sliding out of your hands rather than your legs or back giving out, dedicated support-grip work (dead hangs, farmer's carries, timed barbell holds) closes that gap faster than adding more deadlift volume alone.

Author and Reviewer Note

This article was prepared by the MyTrainer coaching team and reviewed for accuracy of exercise form cues and citation data. All cited studies were retrieved firsthand from PubMed/PMC. This content is for informational purposes and does not substitute for advice from a qualified fitness professional.

For carries and pulling work that build on grip directly, see our deadlift complete guide and kettlebell workout for beginners. To fold grip training into a full session, our resistance bands workout and dumbbell full body workout both scale well with added grip work. Track your hold-time and load progress the same way you track any other lift with our guide on tracking fitness progress.

Grip Strength Training: The Best Exercises and How Often to Train