 First question is from ZW Spivey. What is the best way to increase grip strength? Hmm grip strength we get a lot of questions on grip strength and I do and I made this comment before but I do think it's important Did you do a YouTube video on this? I did and I put some like forearm developing Exercises on there, but here's here's something. This is something that's very important to consider. Okay Your hands literally connect you to everything that you're doing and they're we evolved to have very You know intricate fingers like we could place them well, but also strong hands Literally if your hands aren't strong enough to support the weight that you could lift with your shoulders and your back and your legs And you can't lift that weight. What's happened is Art we barely ever use our hands. In fact, there was a study done With college aged males they tested their grip strength and it was recent was like within the last five years And they found that their grip strength was as good as a 60 year olds in the 1980s Like we just don't do anything with our hands and now this has far-reaching effects on the body It affects the way that your shoulders move of course affects your workouts It affects wrist health and so it's definitely something that's important to focus on so if you're working out and you can't hold on to the barbell or the The dumbbells you find your hands fatigue and you're not like some champion powerlifter who's lifting ungodly amounts of weight This is something you should focus on one of the best things you could do to improve your grip strength Is to do a little bit of grip work every single day So this is an old exercise device. It's probably one of the first pieces of exercise equipment that was ever sold It's those old school hand grippers that you can like a spring loaded one a spring loaded one And and now careful because you can overdo this but literally at your desk have it there and every hour You know mess around with it for five minutes and then put it down. That's it. Don't go to failure You're just you're just working the hands a little bit and your grip strength will go through the roof I mean, what are your guys's thoughts because this person the rest of the question Doug didn't say was struggling with grip on uh progressing on barbell rows What are your thoughts of tools like the fat grips and this person using the fat grips to do barbell rows? Well, they'll have to use way less weight because that makes it harder initially. Yes, I think um They I mean they could just focus on the regular bar to get their hands stronger If it's progress if it's stopping them from progressing I mean you're gonna have to do some stuff to get your grip stronger or just be super patient because eventually it'll catch up You know, I like farmer carries, you know doing things like that to do it I mean, I mean I like the the squeezing and contracting and I think I think that's gonna help But I feel like something that is More closely related to what they are trying to try it like it's for barbell rows, right? So doing anything but that is is gonna not give you as good of an adaptation as doing that exercise So I would do things like just get no wrist wraps on heavy barbell rows And or playing with things like fat grips on that and doing the rows Here's an old-school exercise. Um, this is back when newspapers existed So you might be able to use something else, but you take a big sheet of newspaper I guess you could do this with butcher paper And with one hand you start at the corner and you crumple it up little by little until you get the whole thing into a ball It's actually a very good Um hand exercise and then in the gym Of course, you can hold on to things for time. That's more of an isometric thing But don't forget that because it's isometric the strength tends to be I mean there's definitely It definitely radiates out, but a lot most of strength is in that position, right? So work on gripping things that are fatter like you said fat grips or pinch grip So you can hold plates with your hands like this like this One finger at a time if you really want to get well, that's why I like what okay That's why I like going this direction because it is it's an isometric contraction problem here If you're if you're doing barbell rows and you can't hold on to the barbell It's the it's you've been able to hold in that your hands are in isometric position You're rowing. Okay. So the rest of your body is not but your hands are and so doing things in the eye So hangs, you know hanging with your body weight on a pull-up bar. I think would help I think the fat grips on on the barbell would work and then of course just getting getting good Frequency and volume of holding heavy things. I mean it's like to your point of a farmer walks That was a big game changer for me just holding weight for longer periods of time because it and two You don't really realize that you're holding it for a longer period of time You're just trying to get to you know, so many yards of carrying these objects So at least it takes kind of the focus away from it But yeah, like it just exposing, you know, your hands to more different types of You know textures and like even like the like we have the rice bucket stuff like in in our ocr program It's like things like that are you know things you don't normally do and if that's really a focus of yours, you know expose Like just more dexterity and more function out of your fingers Which then helps with the overall hand strength, which then you know goes up to your grip and your your wrist strength and everything else It's just a matter of like Contracting and moving your fingers and your hands and picking things up Yeah, and of course the forearm, you know flexors and extenders are kind of connected to that, right? So there's exercises that'll flex Uh extend but then don't don't forget lateral a lot of people forget that this also is important Yeah, so I'll I'll I used to get a Like a dumbbell Like you know the ones that you can load with weight the old school ones So you can load weight or whatever and I would hold one end and I would load it with a tiny bit of weight on one end So it was offset and then I do this exercise here or Hold a bit here and go in this direction. So I'm doing for that with Indian clubs I'll do that sometimes too just because yeah, you have like that long lever To account for yeah that that being said all these exercises we're talking about right now like for forms and trying to develop for your your grip strength The greatest gains I ever had on my grip strength came way later when I started just heavy ass deadlifting and farmer carries Like I and and I've done I've like I remember potatoes wrist curls and reverse wrist curls and doing all this You know all the different moves to develop my forms to try and work on my grip strength Nothing gave me better grip strength than actually just getting Stronger at deadlifting stronger at farmer carries that brought it up more than anything else And in a stronger grip for people listening or watching who are like, I'm okay, right? Like what's the benefit? Your presses your rows your curls your extensions when your hands feel strong You're so much more connected to the exercise and you get better Activation up the kinetic chain so they find for example that wearing wrist straps, which tends to make us use a weaker grip Changes the activation up in the neck and in the shoulder So get having a stronger grip even on presses even exercise You don't think you need to have a strong grip when your grip is like try this next time you bench press Try putting wrist support on and wrist wraps on around the bar and all of a sudden you can lift more weight Like how is that possible? It's simulating a stronger grip So strengthen your grip and don't be surprised if you don't see all your lifts improve as a result