Get a grip: a guide to grabbing, the good way

Getting a grip

Perhaps you’ve heard lately that having a strong grip is correlated with a longer, healthier life. But don’t get it twisted, because there is a bigger picture: People with a strong grip probably are strong, exercise, and generally stay active. You are unlikely to just randomly have a very strong grip, and not be strong in general. Grip strength is more of a distillation of that bigger, more complex picture than it is a single isolated key to immortality.

I feel that it’s disingenuous to tell people to work on just their grip alone, as if squeezing a rubber ball sometimes is going to add years to their life. As the studies themselves note, measures of grip strength should really only be used the other way around: If a patient has a weak grip, they ought to be screened for dementia/cognitive dysfunction. (At best, in that scenario, practicing squeezing a rubber ball is just going to fool your doctor into not screening you for stuff they probably should be.) But working on grip is good, because a strong grip does help enable building strength in general.