Closed Hand Strength

This is just what it sounds like, holding things with a closed fist.  This is the most important type of strength for a hitter to have, as gripping the bat is done with closed fists.  This isn’t meant to be groundbreaking info, but I want you to see the carryover from the weight room to the field for both pitchers and hitters.

Closed Hands Gripping a Bat

Training this type of strength is extremely easy, and yet produces noticeable results, especially to the untrained.  After just 3 weeks of dedicated sessions with grip training intermixed, one of my third baseman clients remarked how much harder he would hit the ball at showcases, and how much longer he could swing in the cage without fatigue.  The big major league hitters who seem to just flick the ball over the fence?  Big, powerful forearms with a crushing grip.

Training Closed Hand Strength

As I mentioned, this is easy and allows for a lot of creativity.  The root of all of this is holding something that you can get your hands completely around, such as a chin-up bar, barbell, towel, dumbbell, etc.  Then with that weight in hand, you hang or hold while you stand still or walk.  Vary your weights, sets, time, etc. to maximize your training effect.  Grip training is something that you in most cases want to do to failure… making the weight fall from your fingers.

Hangs

Towel Hangs

Pretty easy.  Grab something overhead and hold on with closed fists.  Chances are, you won’t last nearly as long as those people in movies do, and you would absolutely drop off that building before help arrived.  The grip work involved in performing chin and pull ups is an additional huge benefit of doing them (and if you know me, you know I love me some chin ups).  A weak grip is also a limiting factor for many novices with poor chin up numbers.

Farmers Walks

-Grab heavy things and walk with them.  Repeat until you’re tired or preferably, can’t.  There are many ways to vary this such as with dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, towels, etc.

Towel Farmers Walks

"Blob" Farmer's Walks

Lift Heavy Weights

Do you push yourself when doing deadlifts, bent-over rows, RDLs, etc?  If you do, then your grip has been improving as a side effect.  My forearms transformed one summer when I used  a program from school that had me deadlifting twice per week, sometimes with a straight bar and sometimes with a trap bar.  If you have strong legs and push yourself to get stronger, you might find yourself holding 450 pounds in your hands, which will get you a crushing grip in no time.

Open Hand Strength

This is, again, just what it sounds like: holding onto things while your fist isn’t completely closed.  This type of strength is most important for pitchers and those who want to improve throwing velocity, because the force is applied to the ball from the tips of the fingers.  Having a strong fist isn’t going to help as much here, because closed fist exercises build more strength in the more proximal digits of the fingers.

Fingertips Transmit Power to the Ball

Training Open Hand Strength

I keep talking about rock climbing, but it’s just a fact that those people have freaky strong fingers.  I see the parallel to throwing, and I try to adopt their training methods (within reason).  Loading the fingers should be a gradual process, as the lever arm is really lengthened, which further increases the stress on the forearm muscles.  Point being, don’t just jump into 10 minutes of 2-finger hangs from your door moulding – you’ll have tendinitis or a popped flexor in no time.

Strong fingers

Use An Open Hand Grip…

Rock Rings Open-Hand Grip

Open-hand grip dumbbell

Top of Dumbbell or "Blob" hold

Weight plate farmers walks

Squeezing the life out of a Medicine ball

Final Thoughts

As you probably realize, grip training is something that never has to get boring; it can be varied a thousand different ways.  I just want people out there to start thinking about what their goals are, and how their training is preparing them for their sport.  In baseball, I think it’s clear that grip strength is huge.  Yet, an even more narrow focus (open vs. closed) should yield maximum carryover to the field.

The standard over-the-right-shoulder camera view on the pitcher tracks the ball brilliantly as soon as it leaves the hand.  Seemingly, we would pick up everything thats going on, but this is far from the truth.

Countless times have I heard, “how did he miss that pitch? It was right there.  Maybe it was, or maybe it wasnt.  Thing is, what the baseball does when being thrown 85+ mph is crazy, especially by the Major League pitch-smiths.  Ever watched Greg Maddux pitch?  If you have, you have probably watched his fastball start at a lefty’s hip and mozy on back over the inside corner of the plate.  That is how it is shown on television.

Reality?  Maddux’s fastball darts, sharply and lately.  Imagine a bird flying directly at you and then suddenly changing direction right before slamming into you. Thats the kind of movement he has on his fastball.

Fastballs from most pitchers look pretty much straight, or have a nice gently tail to the arm side, but this is, again, a deception by the camera.  Very few major league pitchers throw straight, and the ones who do (and are successful) throw in the upper 90s.  

Sharp movement on the fastball is crucial to success, and it makes sense when you consider that the difference between a long fly ball and a homerun is maybe an inch on or off the barrel.  The batter barely misses that pitch that moves off his barrel at the last moment.  This is how Mariano Rivera has made living throwing nothing but cut fastballs, ones that the TV camera really doesnt even display.  Think about how late breaking and sharp his cutter must be if he can throw it every single pitch over 15 years, and every hitter knows it.  

Human eye reaction time is such that a hitter cannot watch the ball travel the last 6 feet or so to the bat, and so his swing is really just a well-vectored guess.  So, if a pitcher can make his pitch move in that last 10% of its travels, then the batter’s barrel won’t contact the ball where he intends.  Thats why Mariano Rivera gets everyone out, even when they know what pitch is coming.  It’s beyond their perceptual abilities to square it up.

And its not just the fastball.  Changeups look straight, curveballs look loopy and round.  Good curveballs even in college baseball literally spike themselves into the ground when viewed from the plate.  The round, looping curves that the camera shows us are really some of the most diabolically sharp-breaking, physics-defying pitches you will never get the (dis)pleasure of facing.

This is all stuff that fans who have unfortunately never played at a high level may not understand about the game.  The pop of the mitt and the blur of the ball at the ballpark gives fans part of the picture, but they still only watch as if through a keyhole, never truly seeing the game as it actually is.   When you are privileged enough to play against players with that kind of talent and potential you realize how frighteningly difficult it is to have success hitting in the Major Leagues.