hi, i was just thinking, if i take two tennis balls and sqeeze them for 5 seconds, for 5 reps and 3 sets, it could strengthen my grip and forearms for baseball. Do you think this will work?
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10-25-2006, 08:53 AM #1
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10-25-2006, 08:56 AM #2
- Join Date: Oct 2006
- Location: Caribbean, St. Kitts and Nevis
- Age: 51
- Posts: 1,169
- Rep Power: 1544
It might work for a little while, but you're going to have to, eventually, have more resistance. I use the Captains of Crush grippers from Ironmind. I also recommend plate curls and reverse plate curls. Finally, another great way to work your grip is to do curls and presses with a THICK barbell. Gripping a thick barbell for your arm/shoulder exercises will quickly strengthen your hands/forearms.
RAW PRs--no suit, no belt, no wraps, no spotters
Squat- 1075 lbs
Deadlift- 1250 lbs
Bench- 795 lbs
Power Clean- 665 lbs.
Barbell Curl-405 lbs.
225 Bench Press for reps-56 reps
40 yard dash-4.13 seconds (electronic official time)
vertical leap-55 inches
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10-25-2006, 09:03 AM #3
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10-25-2006, 09:09 AM #4
- Join Date: Oct 2006
- Location: Caribbean, St. Kitts and Nevis
- Age: 51
- Posts: 1,169
- Rep Power: 1544
Joe, I don't know if you're familar with them or not, but these grippers from ironmind are not your sporting goods variety of gripper. They are very tough and, over time, will really make your hands strong. Also, if you can, I would really try to do some work with a thick barbell, maybe one that is double the thickness of a regular bar. If you don't want to buy one, then you could wrap something around the part of the barbell that you grip/hold onto it with. Try it and see how fatigued your hands are the next day. Do these things and, soon enough, your grip will be very tough and can only help your baseball.
RAW PRs--no suit, no belt, no wraps, no spotters
Squat- 1075 lbs
Deadlift- 1250 lbs
Bench- 795 lbs
Power Clean- 665 lbs.
Barbell Curl-405 lbs.
225 Bench Press for reps-56 reps
40 yard dash-4.13 seconds (electronic official time)
vertical leap-55 inches
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10-25-2006, 09:11 AM #5
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10-25-2006, 09:19 AM #6
- Join Date: Oct 2006
- Location: Caribbean, St. Kitts and Nevis
- Age: 51
- Posts: 1,169
- Rep Power: 1544
Joe, if you have never really trained your grip before, I would start off with the trainer or the #1. Even these are tough on a beginner. The grippers come with recommendations on how to train them and some routines you can use.
RAW PRs--no suit, no belt, no wraps, no spotters
Squat- 1075 lbs
Deadlift- 1250 lbs
Bench- 795 lbs
Power Clean- 665 lbs.
Barbell Curl-405 lbs.
225 Bench Press for reps-56 reps
40 yard dash-4.13 seconds (electronic official time)
vertical leap-55 inches
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10-25-2006, 09:27 AM #7
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10-25-2006, 10:34 AM #8
Along with the grippers I dip my hands into buckets of sand with my hand stretched out and then squeeze through the sand and try to make a fist. What I liked about the sand was that each finger was worked pretty well. Check out Ironmind.com, if they still have it they have tips for improving grip strength and they are extremely effective. Though one issue I had with the grippers (full size) was that my pinky and ring finger were the weak link, granted, they do have the compact grippers to isolate them as well. To the point though, I have had my best grip results from a varied training strategy that involves the full and half size grippers, sand grabs and other assorted techniques...
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10-25-2006, 02:25 PM #9
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10-25-2006, 02:34 PM #10
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10-25-2006, 08:27 PM #11
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10-25-2006, 08:35 PM #12
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10-25-2006, 08:47 PM #13
Yes, in theory, it will. The main problem though, is that this is an isometric exercise.
Isometrics are awesome, badass, effective, and an essential part of training. While they do require some recovery for the muscle tissue, they don't deplete much energy.
They have a major weakness, however, and that's measurability. You can't measure progress with increasing resistance. In fact, some days you might squeeze less and get weaker and not know it.
For some of the bar things, they have machines now where the bars don't move and a screen reads out how much weight you'd be holding up would there be a bar there, those are cool.
In this case, I've seen something applicable for you. Some people have this thing set up where they do pullups by having this rope/string thing come out of a tennis ball, hanging onto the ceiling.
You can do something like that, since you want to work on a tennis-ball-like grip. Not just for pulls (since those are hard), but for sort of any weight, have a dumbbell or plate hanging from them or something, like a wrist roller does or whatever.
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