Building an iron grip for combat sports

Niggling elbows? Gassed out forearms? Hands beat up from striking? Losing sub attempts due to grip fatigue?

Strong grips and resilient elbows, forearms, wrists, hands and fingers are essential for combat sports, especially in something like Gi jiujitsu.

But people are often unsure of where to start or how to go about training their grip in the best way.

We want to break it down systematically.

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Grip movement patterns

- Wrist flexion (bending the wrist downwards towards the elbow): Useful for grip strength, clinch control, finishing subs, wrist stability when striking, etc. Often well developed already but some extra work can help. Wrist dumbbell or cable curls with the forearms braced on the knees or a bench (palm to ceiling) are effective here, as well as wrist rollers.

- Wrist extension (cocking wrist back towards the elbow): Helps balance out potentially dominant flexors, useful for elbow resilience, framing strength, punch control and power transfer through knuckles. Again we can use cables or dumbbells for wrist extension with the forearms braced on the knees or a bench (palm to floor). as well as wrist rollers.

- Pronation (twisting the wrist so palm faces down): Helps with overhooks, clinch control, wrist control, top pressure, wrist strength when rotating punches. Can also be helpful in treating golfer’s elbow. We train this by having the elbow bent to 90 degrees and rotating the forearm and wrist against resistance so that the palm faces downwards. You could use a one sided dumbbell, a club / mace, a cable, a hammer / sledgehammer.

- Supination (twisting the wrist so palm faces up): Helps with underhooks, wrist control, certain chokes, wrist rotation into punches like uppercuts. The opposite of supination so we're rotating the palm upwards against resistance with any of the above mentioned resistance tools, and it can be helpful in treating tennis elbow.

- Pinch (grip between fingers and thumb): Helps lapel grips, fingertip control, finger resilience. This can be trained using the likes of plate, weighted towel or hex dumbbell pinches, using holds, plate flips or catches, pinch curls, etc

- Hang / Support (holding on to something and supporting weight): This can help with grip strength and endurance and whole grip resilience. Pull up bar dead hangs, grip switching dead hangs, towel hangs, rope climbs and farmer carries can all help here

And some bonus movement patterns:

- Finger isolation (training each finger under resistance e.g. finger flexion, extension, abduction, adduction, thumb opposition): Useful for finger resilience and fine motor control. We can use mini bands for finger extension, rice bucket work or fingertip push ups to train this.

- Radial and Ulnar deviation (side to side wrist movement, radial = thumb side, ulnar = pinky side): Helpful for general wrist resilience under unpredictable forces. We can train this using a band, cable, one sided dumbbell or hammer. 

Programming tips and examples

But that's a lot of things to train right?

Absolutely. But we only need to pick 2-3 patterns to focus on at a time. Pronation and supination are often neglected but beneficial for combat sports. While many athletes will have dominant wrist flexors with lagging extensors - bringing these up to scratch can really help elbow resilience. 

Add 3 sets of 1-2 exercises that cover the patterns you choose, to each S&C session. Alternatively you could pair them with a cardio session, or as something you do at home on a work break, or even at the end of a sport session (just try not to excessively overload the grip in any one session).

Rep ranges don’t matter all that much once we’re getting a strong training stimulus, but 6-15 reps typically works well for grip work. Holds and isometrics can be done for time ranging anywhere from 15-60+ seconds.

Keep in mind that many compound back exercises like rows and pulldowns, as well as bicep isolation exercises like curl variations, will also train the grip to varying degrees. To this end, some people forgo using straps on back exercises in the hopes that they’ll get better grip gains as a result. This isn’t ideal in my opinion. Grip will often become the first limiting factor to progressive overload on back exercises. Using straps will help to push past these plateaus, meaning more effective pulling strength and resilience progress. You’ll still get good grip stimulus even while using straps, and if we’re isolating the grip directly with movements such as those I’ve listed above, then it doesn’t matter if we’re not working the grip to failure on our back exercises. 

Example:

S&C Session A:

Finish with 3 sets of DB wrist extensions, forearms braced on bench, for 8-12 reps, paired with another key resilience exercise (e.g. core, calf or neck work)

S&C Session B: 

Finish with 3 sets of supination and 3 sets of pronation for 10-12 reps each, paired with another key resilience exercise (e.g. core, calf or neck work)

With 2 sport sessions each week: 

Perform 3 sets of dead hangs from a bar for 30-60s, varying grip choice on the bar 

Something along those lines should be plenty. Whichever movement patterns and specific exercises you choose, aim to get strong on them for 8-16 weeks, then switch to different patterns or exercises.

Healthy joints, stronger grips, better performance and more jacked forearms - nice.

Enjoy

Sean

P.S. If you need help managing your S&C to and perform and feel at your best, my coaching might be a good fit. Enquire here if you'd like to chat through it.