Having a strong grip is essential for most forms of martial arts. Wether it’s increasing your grip strength for better control during a muay thai clinch or allowing you to secure wrist control when attemting to apply a Kimura in a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competition, the importance of grip training should not be overlooked.

That is why this article looks to focus on a few basic grip training and wrist exercises that martial artists can perform to build stronger wrists and grip strength.

Grip Training Exercises

Kettlebell Drop & Catch

This grip exercise is good for getting warmed up. It will help develop your grip strength and assist in holding onto your opponent for longer during competition.

Use a kettlebell with a weight you’re comfortable working with and place your feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart and bend at your knees. Then slowly pull the kettlebell up infrom to your chest and as you drop the weight, catch it with the opposite hand. Then repeat this process until you feel your wrists, hands and forearms are adequately warmed up.

Note- Safety is the most important element here and this exercise is best performed outdoors on grass, as you don’t want to damage your floor or carpet should you fail to catch the kettlebell during the drop. Also, consider wearing toughened shoes e.g. steel toe capped boots, as you don’t want to hurt your toes either.

Captains of Crush Squeeze & Hold

This grip exercise requires a Captains of Crush hand gripper or some other grip strength tool that replicates the squeezing motion. The importance here is that you counter pressure against your closed grip throughout. This is a simple exercise whereby you squeeze the hand gripper until it is in its closed position and then hold for a count of 10.

Note – As the Captains of Crush hand grippers come in varying strengths, you will require one which will not be easy to keep closed during the 10 seconds. If however you find 10 seconds to easy, increase the squeeze time to 20 and so on.

Hand Gipper Squeeze & Rotation

This is my favorite grip training exercise as I replicates a real grip scenario. In this grip exercise you repeat the above instructions, but this time during the 10 second count you rotate your wrist clockwise and counter clockwise until the 10 second count is over. You should find this grip exercise places alot more pressure on your wrists and subsequently help build an even stronger grip.

These are some of my favorite exercises to help get me in the flow or things. If you wan’t to take your grip training to the next level and really intimidate your opponents, then check out the Grip Master’s Manual.

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