How to Increase Grip Strength to Live Longer

The Surprising Link Between Grip Strength and Longevity: How to Train for a Longer Life

Grip strength isn’t just about holding onto heavy weights; it’s a robust indicator of overall health and longevity. Research shows that stronger grips are associated with lower risks of all-cause mortality, better cardiovascular health, and even slower biological aging. In this blog post, we’ll explore the science behind grip strength and longevity and dive into practical training tips to improve your grip while enhancing your overall fitness.

The Science of Grip Strength and Longevity

Studies have found a strong correlation between grip strength and longevity:

1. All-Cause Mortality: A BMJ study of over 500,000 participants revealed that decreased grip strength is linked to higher mortality rates and an increased incidence of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

2. Biological Aging: Research from Stanford Center on Longevity showed that lower grip strength correlates with accelerated DNA methylation age, which indicates faster biological aging.

3. Functional Independence: A longitudinal study in GMMA found that midlife grip strength predicts disability in old age, highlighting its importance for maintaining independence.

Grip strength is more than just a measure of physical ability—it’s a marker of overall health and vitality.

Why Grip Strength Matters

While it’s tempting to focus solely on grip strength, the true takeaway is broader: grip strength reflects overall health habits, including regular exercise, a balanced diet, and avoiding harmful behaviors like smoking and excessive alcohol consumption.

A strong grip isn’t the goal—it’s the result of a lifestyle that promotes total body strength and health.

How to Train for Grip Strength and Longevity

Improving your grip strength doesn’t mean squeezing a stress ball at your desk. Instead, incorporate functional movements that build grip strength while also enhancing overall muscle mass and cardiovascular fitness.

1. Pull-Ups and Bar Hangs

• What to Do: Perform strict pull-ups to build upper-body strength and grip. After each set, add a 10-30 second bar hang.
• Why It Works: Combines dynamic and isometric muscle contractions, critical for building true strength.

2. Thick Bar Training

• What to Do: Use thicker bars for exercises like pull-ups, deadlifts, or presses. You can purchase grips to wrap around standard bars to increase their diameter.
• Why It Works: Activates more muscles in your hands and forearms, making every lift a grip-strengthening opportunity.

3. Farmer’s Carries

• What to Do:
  • Heavy Carries: Grab heavy weights (dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, or odd objects) and carry them for short distances (25-100 meters).
  • Light Carries for Distance: Use lighter weights and walk as far as possible, switching hands when necessary.
• Why It Works: Combines aerobic conditioning with grip training and functional strength.

The Ultimate Grip Strength Workout

Here’s a full workout to improve grip strength and longevity:

1. Pull-Up + Bar Hang Superset:

   • Perform 5-10 pull-ups (or as many as you can).
   • Immediately transition into a 20-30 second bar hang.
   • Repeat for 3-5 sets.

2. Farmer’s Carries:

   • Use a heavy kettlebell or dumbbell.
   • Walk as far as possible with one hand, then switch hands.
   • Repeat for 2-3 rounds, gradually increasing the weight or distance over time.

3. Optional Long-Distance Carry:

   • Use a light kettlebell and walk for 1-2 miles, switching hands as needed.

Why It Works

This combination of functional strength training and aerobic conditioning builds grip strength while enhancing your overall fitness and longevity. It also keeps your workouts varied and engaging.

The Bigger Picture

Grip strength is a reflection of your overall health and fitness habits. Focus on building total-body strength, staying active, and maintaining healthy lifestyle choices. Remember, the small, consistent steps you take every day lead to a longer, stronger life.

Ready to Get Started?
Join the Garage Gym Athlete community to access workouts that build strength, endurance, and resilience. Sign up for a free trial at garagegymathlete.com.

Remember, if you don’t kill comfort, comfort will kill you.

 Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: Did you know that there's a ton of research on grip strength, meaning how strong your grip actually is and living longer, that's what I'm going to dive into today. This is the garage gym athlete podcast. I'm Jerred Moon, and we're going to dive into some quick research on grip strength and longevity.

Ultimately, I'll reference a few studies, but also interpret what this could mean. And then ultimately your takeaway and what you should do. With the data and in your own training. Uh, so there are some pretty big studies. There was a study in the BMJ involving over 500, 000 participants, and it found that decreased grip strength was linked to higher all cause mortality, as well as increased incidence of cardiovascular and respiratory disease.

There was another study, um, from the Stanford Center on Longevity that indicated that lower grip strength correlates with accelerated DNA methylation age, suggesting faster biological aging. And then there's also a longitudinal study in GMMA that revealed midlife grip strength predicts disability in old age, highlighting its role in maintaining functional independence.

And there are a couple of. Other small tests like this when it comes to health, fitness, and longevity. One is grip strength. The second one is being able to get off the floor without the use of your hands, which comes down to leg strength and mobility. And another big one is your overall VO2 max. So we know if you want to live a longer, healthier life, you need to be doing concurrent training, which is a combination of training your aerobic system and also strength.

But here's the deal. When it comes to looking at something like this. You might be thinking, okay, if I want to live longer, I need to have a strong grip. So I'm going to start training my grip. I'm going to get one of those, uh, you know, grip, grip strengtheners or stress ball and I'm going to start squeezing it while I'm at my desk.

But that's not really the takeaway we have here. It's not just to increase your grip strength because grip strength is a robust marker. It's, it's hard to develop your grip strength, but you really have to consider in all of these studies, like many studies is the, the healthy user bias because individuals with stronger grips often engage in healthier activities, behaviors, habits, they exercise regularly, they have balanced diets, they avoid smoking.

And so collectively that's going to contribute to better health, health outcome. But the opposite of that, like low grip strength can absolutely signal like health issues or you're not training enough or you don't have a good health profile, these kinds of things. But it doesn't mean you just want a strong grip, right?

You want all the other things that I mentioned, balanced diet, regular exercise, avoiding bad habits like smoking or drinking alcohol in excess, all of those kinds of things. So when we're looking at like, okay, if I want a stronger grip to live longer, what do I actually need to do? And it's not just get a stress ball and a grip strengthener, you know, captain crush, whatever the, and start doing those things, because that's not really what the, the benefit is.

What you want to be doing are big functional movements that can also increase your strength. So anytime a bar is involved, this is going to, you know, Like go a long way for you. And so let's get into that for a second dead hangs. You can do dead hangs from a pull up bar, but that kind of fits into that realm of, okay, I'm just training my grip here, but pull ups from a bar.

So if you want to incorporate grip strength, doing pull ups and also bar hangs, now we have a bar involved. We're getting functional movements. Pull ups are probably one of the best exercises for the upper body that you could possibly do. You know, you're engaging so many different muscles. You're training your grip strength.

And if you want to just combine these two, superset them. So do five, 10, 15, how many ever strict pull ups that you can do. And then in the set with a bar hang 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, as long as you can hold. And that workout just increased. It's difficulty. By several fold and you're starting to train, train an isometric muscle contraction, which is one of the three that need to be trained for true strength, isometric, concentric, and eccentric.

So that's one way that you can start training. That's functional that builds more muscle mass, because that's really the idea behind what we want. We want more muscle mass. We don't just want more grip strength. Cause you can get a stronger grip without being necessarily any healthier, but building more muscle mass in a way that contributes to more grip strength is ultimately what you want.

Another thing that you can do in that same vein with a bar is just doing thick bar training. If you don't want to just train grip and do, um, or any of those kinds of things. You can just start training with a thicker bar. They have grips now that you can put on your current barbell. You can get fatter barbells.

You can get fatter pull up bars. In fact, for years, I had this yoke from rogue that just had a super thick. Um, crossbar, like horizontal bar wasn't really made for pull ups. It's made for like you lowering it and it's a yoke. So you can like carry it and all those kinds of things. Uh, you put it on your back.

So they didn't want it to be a pull up bar, but it's super thick. And that's all I had for several years. And I did most of my pull ups on that. So I got really good at fat bar pull ups and really trained my grip in a significant way. But if you want to just keep doing things that you're already doing, while also building the muscle mass and developing the grip strength, just train with a thicker bar.

Like I said, either by the grips that go on your bar, uh, that can make the bar thicker or get a fatter pull up bar, do anything that you can to just start training with a thicker bar. It's going to go a long way. Now, the last thing I have is anytime you can carry something in your hand, farmer's walk, suitcase carry, like whatever you want with dumbbells, with kettlebells, with barbells, odd objects, uh, water canisters, anything you can, I'm a huge fan of these and doing them for very long distances.

So there are two ways to train these, uh, you could grab like a heavy kettlebell or heavy barbells or whatever you have that's really heavy and you could think about it more in the strong man sense or fashion to where you're doing like 25 meters, 50 meters, a hundred meters, something like that all at once and that's to, You know, go a little bit more anaerobic.

It's definitely way more taxing on the grip. It should be pretty heavy, but the other way I like to do this, that trains both your aerobic system and, uh, you're getting some grip training is go light and carry far. So if we're talking about like, okay, I could carry a 70 pound kettlebell, uh, you know, a hundred meters before I feel like I have to drop it.

Well, what can you do with a 20 or 30 pound kettlebell? And could you walk a mile like that? Could you walk two miles? Uh, this is something I've done a number of times. It's kind of like a meet yourself Saturday workout where I just walk as far as I can before I have to set it down. And I'll do that two or three times, like away from my house.

And then I'll start coming back. So, and it's so much worse on the way back. Because once you start to lose grip strength, it gets really hard. So this workout is very challenging. And so here's my recommendation, the full workout, and it's going to help you build a great aerobic base as well. Grab a light to medium kettlebell.

Start with the right hand, walk as far as you can. It's going to start burning till you feel like, you know what? I need to set this thing down, set it down. You could rest five, 10 seconds, whatever you need to. You shouldn't be overly taxed, uh, from the aerobic standpoint. So you don't want to stop for very long.

You want to try and keep your heart rate up. And then you switch to the left hand and then you go about as far as you can with the left hand before you have to set it down. And you're going to do this two or three times. So right hand, as far as you can left hand, as far as you can, right hand, left hand, if you're doing it twice, if you're doing a third time, right hand, left hand, now you, this is you walking away from your house.

Assuming you're a garage gym athlete as far as you can now you need to come back And you're going to do the same thing right hand left hand as far as you can But you're going to notice You did it in three sets on the way out might take you six on the way back Might take you eight might take you 16 to where you're switching off a ton because the grip strength goes And then starts to burn and it's really hard and you'll notice you're getting your heart rate up You're improving your grip strength You'll probably be in zone two.

You're improving your aerobic base without having to do something boring, like zone two running, which can be boring, but also super beneficial. So that is one of my favorite ways to train the ultimate longevity, like cocktail, right? It's like aerobic training. But while carrying something, it's just a phenomenal way to build that aerobic base and also get some grip strength in there.

So that's it for this one. If you'd like to increase your grip strength and live longer, plenty of ways to do that for all of our athletes out there who are training, getting better, harder to kill at garage gym athlete. We really appreciate it. If you want to be a part of our training, go to garagegymathlete.

com. We would love to have you remember if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.