Why Grip Strength is Important for Women

Women should focus on developing good grip strength for numerous reasons. I'm a certified personal trainer. I discourage my female clients from using weight lifting gloves, because these interfere with developing stronger hands.

If you're a woman reading this, don't assume that developing grip strength doesn't apply to you just because all the ads for "Fat Gripz" and articles about grip strength feature MEN.

If anything, women, more so than men, need to develop grip strength. Aren't you sick and tired of having to ask men to unscrew jars?

Women Should Pass on the Weightlifting Gloves if They Want a Strong Grip

If you want a super grip, you'll need to ditch the weight lifting gloves. Getting callouses on your palms is a tiny price to pay for getting a stronger grip. The pulling exercises, such as rows, increase grip strength far more if you're not wearing gloves!

Building strength in the forearm muscles, which control grip, will carry over to compound exercises like the deadlift and all other pulling actions like dumbbell bent-over rows, lat pull-downs and seated rows -- which are favorite exercises among women who train in a gym.

How many women reading this often find themselves ending a deadlift set because their wrists kill - their back and legs are still smoking, but the bar is just about ready to fall through their fingers thanks to a weak grip?

There's actually quite a few exercises that target the forearms. I want to first explain a trainingtechnique that builds great forearm and grip strength: fat bar training.

Unfortunately, most gyms and health clubs do not have fat bars. The Fat Gripz product (available online) replaces the fat bar. This device fastens securely to a bar or cable-pulley handle, increasing its diameter.

Imagine pulling a high tension band towards you; the handle is one inch in diameter. Now imagine it's two inches in diameter. Your fingers are now at a disadvantage, and your forearm muscles must work harder to compensate. This will strengthen a woman's grip.

Fat bar training will kill two birds with one stone: 

You'll get your major muscle work in, such as the posterior chain in the deadlift, but at the same time, you'll get more targeting to your forearms.

If you don't have fat grip tools, you can still strengthen your grip by ditching the gloves; by doing more pulling exercises; and by doing the following:

-Squeezing hand grips (available at any sporting goods store and online)

-Doing wrist rolls with a wrist roll device or dumbbells

-Doing seated pulley rows or lat pull-downs with only your index, middle and ring fingers

-Repeatedly picking up a thick heavy book by its end, with just the tips of your thumb and fingers

-Doing farmer walks with very heavy dumbbells

Will women develop thick Popeye forearms from developing grip strength?

No. It's exceedingly difficult for women to develop burly meaty forearms. The only huge forearms on a woman are those that come with obesity.