In all of the baseball training manuals hand strengthening seems to be ignored.  Some of the games greatest hitters would always comment on how having strong hands made them good at their craft, but what about pitchers?  And what about that part of the body that actually delivers the baseball?  Sure, everyone knows a strong shoulder is required to throw hard, but the hand and the fingertips are the ones who have the last say in what the ball does.  That being said, I want my hands and fingers strong.

Easy In-Home Strengthening

In this post we will go into some of the immediate and easy things one can do at home to start developing stronger hands and fingers.  Grip strength can be developed in a tremendous amount of ways, but we will just focus on a few today that worked for me and will get you started in the right direction.

5 Fingertip Planks

I found that fingertip pushups were too difficult for me to start with (I feared every one of my fingers was going to snap off), so I started with sets of fingertip holds in the pushup (plank) position.  I started with 2 or 3 sets of 10-15 seconds and worked up to 3 sets of 30+ seconds.

Fingertip Arm Shuffles

After I could comfortably hold the 5 finger plank for long periods of time comfortably, I progressed to arm shuffles, which gives brief moments of being on only one hand while switching positions, thus increasing the load on the fingertips.  I couldn’t get a good video up, but performing shuffles is easy.  All you do is start in the plank position, and move one hand closer in, then the other.  Then you return each hand to it’s starting position one at a time.  So it will be right in, left in, right out, left out.  Kind of like the hokey pokey.

3 Fingertip Planks

After I was pretty comfortable with arm shuffles, I was ready to try fingertip planks with just my thumb, index and middle finger.  One can eventually go to just 2 fingers as strength increases, though I don’t think I would recommend that.

Hand Grippers

There are tons of handheld grippers on the market, and chances are you have used one of those cheap plastic ones found at the local sporting goods store.  Strongmen love Captains of Crush grippers, as they take a lot of strength to close.  I don’t like them because they aren’t adjustable.  The gripper of choice for me is the Super Gripper, which I got at Iron Woody Fitness.  It’s finely adjustable and a pretty neat device, though bulky.  

I also like this gel-like gripper that a friend gave me, which gives more of an isometric palm-gripped workout.  It’s different, very portable, and nice to squeeze while sitting around or in the car.

The Gripper Antagonists

Humans are kind of like lobsters.  We all know that lobsters have tremendous pinching force, but are rendered helpless by a rubber band.  Why? Because the muscles that open the claw are never subjected to the same forces as those that close.  The same is true of us, where we squeeze things but never open our hands under tension.  When strengthening the grip it is important the work the antagonist muscles (the ones that open the hand) as well.  This is easily done with a rubber band around the fingers, or a Thera-Band as I like to use (pictured).

The Thera-Band is nice because you can adjust the tension not only by using different thickness bands, but also by pulling the band tighter against the fingers with the other hand.

Gyros

If you haven’t seen the Dynaflex gyros, they are pretty neat devices.  They rotate at up to 18,000 rpms in your hand and you just have to keep them going and hold on.  They definitely strengthen your hands and give a nice little pump to your whole forearm.  It’s not enough in itself, but I use it as a supplement and its also kind of fun to do. Only problem is that some people have difficulty getting and keeping the gyro going.  I can start it with a thumb flick and keep it going easily, but a lot of my well-coordinated friends just can’t seem to master it.  Its one of those things that you may or may not figure out.  You can hold it like a baseball (pictured) or any way you like.  Holding it on the fingertips is a serious challenge.

There’s More

These are just a few exercises to get started on.  There are a ton of other grip exercises, many of which are more easily done in a gym.  The next installment will cover some of the more strength-training oriented movements, and ways of adapting regular exercises to gain additional grip strength benefits.