What these things do is represent a simple and elegant solution to adding more grip strength training to your regular workout. Tyler Grips are cone shaped, thick rubber tubes that are cut to allow them to slip over the handles of barbells and dumbbells. What this does is prevent your hand from being able to close around the bar, thus forcing you to squeeze the weight harder to hold it up. I’ve been making fat grips for my Precor cable machine, and we currently have PVC handles of 1″ all the way up to 3″ (pretty much impossible to hold up one’s body weight). While my grips have been a perfect solution to adding grip in our cable and band exercises, I have been falling short adding more grip training to our barbell and dumbbell workouts.

So, I had seen these Tyler Grips before and thought again about getting a pair. The Tylers, Tim and Jacob, are incredibly nice people and we talked about ways I could integrate these into my programs.

There are other companies selling rubber Fat Grips, including a company called Fat Gripz. I’ve never used them, but they are just straight across and don’t feature the cone shape of the Tyler Grips. Here’ what I like about the cone shape:

It allows for two varied levels of resistance in the same grip: Grab it on the fat end, and get the most difficult hold possible. Grab it on the smaller end and your fingers sneak closer together, making it slightly easier. Two different resistence levels.

This is important to me for two reasons:

1. I have a bunch of softball players and younger athletes who need grip strength but don’t have big hands. Holding the narrower end of the Tyler Grip will be equivalent to holding the fat end for the guys with bigger hands.
2. I like using drop sets for grip work, and this has one built in: Hold the fat end as long as possible, and when it drops, pick it back up by the narrow end. When that drops, remove the grip altogether and hold the regular dumbbell handle. It allows one dumbbell or barbell to have 3 resistance levels for things like holds and farmers walks. Now we don’t have to take 3 sets of dumbbells on our walks. I think time under tension is a big key to developing solid, strong forearms, and these provide that with increased efficiency.

Tyler Grips run $39 bucks for a pair, which is a pretty good deal considering those lame BOSU balls run like 100 dollars each. There’s gonna be a bunch of videos to come using these things. Rock Rings, fat cable grips and Tyler Grips are gonna make for some fun combinations of grip and hand strength training. Stay Tuned!

This exercise requires a partner, a barbell and some grip strength.  Choose a weight that you can hold without the added motion for 20-40 seconds, and do sets until your grip gets crushed (3-5 sets will do it, depending on the weight and your strength).

What is a farmer’s walk?  Grab something really heavy and walk with it.  Easy enough.

One way that I was taught to make this exercise more holistic is to only hold weight in one hand at a time.  That way, your body has to strongly engage the lateral core muscles to counteract the weight pulling you over.

gripping the rolled-up towel

There are a million ways to vary this exercise, and what I have for you below is just one of them: a blob hold in one hand with a heavy towel hold in the other.  This way, one hand works on finger strength with a light weight while the other works on brute strength while holding a heavy dumbbell with a towel.  And, since one side is heavier than the other, the core is strongly activated. The towel hold ain’t easy;  just ask Kevin Loftis, one of my high school pitchers who did more than a quarter mile today with them.

blob hold on top of dumbbell

So, now that you’ve got your grips, just get out there and walk! Go for time, length, or just total fatigue.  Your pick.