Get a grip
Depending on the preconditions of an individual presenting to me in a clinical setting, I will insist on a barrage of relevant tests from primary healthcare. Prescriptive exercise is a cornerstone of integrative medical practice, you should not charge headlong into it with insufficient data. Risks have to be identified and managed before embarking on interventions whether they be for high performance or health dysfunction. The tests requested vary according to the individual circumstance of course but one that is ever present is Grip Strength via an accurate, calibrated electronic dynamometer.
Why?
Bohannon (2019) found
“ grip strength is largely consistent as an explanation of concurrent overall strength, upper limb function, bone mineral density, fractures, falls, malnutrition, cognitive impairment, depression, sleep problems, diabetes, multimorbidity, and quality of life. “
In hockey strength and conditioning it is rarely, if ever identified as a specific target for improvement and is usually left as a secondary outcome from various upper body exercises as diverse as pull ups and bench presses. All of which are inherently valuable and yet, at Voitto we believe it is an area worth working hard in pre-season and maintaining during the competitive program.
Just for a moment, sit and ponder how much use your forearms get from executing hockey skills repeatedly. The left forearm given its predominance in everything from tackling to stick turnovers is subject to particularly high loads.
So yeah, if you want a balanced, tailored prescriptive exercise program that sits well with primary healthcare and helps you in reaching your hockey playing goals vis Voitto you will be having hand grip assessed and improved.
A glimpse at some helpful exercises for grip
Look, it is simple enough to Google a plethora of grip strengthening exercises from the commonsense and functional through to the bizarre. The following are just a few we use and like every other item in our prescriptive library, once an individual plateaus with an exercise, we change things up and seek fresh stimulation to at least maintain, if not always, improve performance.
Forearm muscle movements are extraordinarily complex and ensuring any targeted training program is well balanced is essential to avoiding injury. There are over 20 muscles from elbow to wrist. This means achieving an appropriate balance between the antagonistic muscle groups,namely the flexors and extensors. Dysfunctional forearm movement patterns most readily seen in sports such as tennis can trigger inflammation-related forearm conditions like tendonitis and epicondylitis.
These exercises are indicative not definitive and should be done under trained supervision in the first instance.
Reverse Grip Curl
The Plate Pinch
Hand Gripper
References
Bohannon, Richard W. 2019. “Grip Strength: An Indispensable Biomarker For Older Adults.” Clinical Interventions in Aging 14 (October): 1681–91.
