Grip strength: the underrated health marker you can actually train

At a check-up, your doctor measures blood pressure, pulse and probably your waist. One number that says a great deal about your muscular fitness usually gets left out: how hard you can squeeze. Grip strength has quietly become one of the most interesting measurements in health research - a kind of vital sign for your muscles that takes a single second to record. It reflects your training state, your ageing trajectory and forces working deep inside the body. And the best part: unlike blood pressure or cholesterol, you can train your grip strength directly, with exercises that are fun and cost almost no time.

Grip strength is not something you buy - you build it. I support the strength sessions that build mine with FitLine Creatine+ - more on that below. First, it is worth understanding why researchers look at your hands at all.

Why researchers look at your hands

The largest study on the topic was published in 2015, and it was set up on an impressive scale: in the PURE study from McMaster University, nearly 140,000 adults aged 35 to 70 across 17 countries were assessed and followed for an average of four years. The result, published in The Lancet: for every 5 kilograms less grip strength, the risk of dying during the observation period rose by around 16 percent on average. The risk of dying from cardiovascular disease was 17 percent higher. Even more remarkable: as a predictor of heart-related and overall death, the humble handshake outperformed systolic blood pressure - the very number every doctor measures first.

Now for the honest caveat you would also hear from any serious researcher: this is an association, not a proven cause-and-effect chain. Nobody can claim that a stronger handshake alone buys you five extra years. But the link survived adjustments for age, sex, weight, smoking and activity - and it fits a picture that muscle ageing keeps drawing: a body running out of strength is a body under strain. The same study actually found no association with falls, fractures or diabetes. Your hands are a window, not a crystal ball.

In clinical practice, grip strength is already standard. The European consensus group on sarcopenia (EWGSOP2, a panel of ageing researchers) has used the handshake since 2019 as the first test for muscle weakness: below 27 kilograms for men and 16 kilograms for women, strength is classed as low and further tests follow. Why strength rather than muscle mass? Because the data show strength predicts poor outcomes better than sheer mass does. As for the normal ageing curve: grip strength rises into early adulthood, plateaus, and declines continuously from about age 50. If you find strength training in your mid-forties, you are working exactly in the window where that curve can still be shifted noticeably.

Grip strength is trainable - here is the evidence

The good news first: your hands are not some body part that ignores training. A systematic review published in 2025 pooled 22 randomised trials with roughly 1,000 participants aged 19 to 78. The result: targeted hand and forearm training measurably improved grip strength, with a small-to-moderate effect. The age difference was striking - older adults gained considerably more than younger ones. Manual dexterity, meaning fine finger control, responded to training even more strongly.

You do not even need special exercises to move the needle: an analysis of 24 training trials with more than 3,000 adults aged 60 and over showed that completely ordinary exercise programmes lift grip strength modestly but measurably - most of all when the exercises stay close to daily life or combine several components. And for those of us who are younger, there is a neat practical example: in a six-week intervention with two climbing and two strength sessions per week, recreational athletes significantly improved both their hang time and their measured grip strength. Six weeks. That is how quickly your forearm muscles answer.

Climbers even have a detailed dose-response study: eight weeks of training with intermittent dead hangs on a hangboard increased grip endurance by around 45 percent, and weighted max-hangs by around 34 percent. You do not need to climb at competition level to take the lesson from this: short, hard hanging phases with breaks are an extremely efficient tool for your forearms.

The exercises that genuinely build grip

You need no special equipment. Four building blocks are enough, and three of them exist in every gym or playground:

1. Dead hangs. Simply hold on to a bar and hang. Start with 20 to 30 seconds and build up to 45 to 60 seconds over the weeks. The hang trains your finger flexors while also opening the chest and decompressing the shoulders after a long day at the desk. For a step up, try intermittent hangs: 10 seconds hanging, 5 seconds rest, repeated several times.

2. Farmer's carries. Pick up two heavy dumbbells or kettlebells and walk: 30 to 45 seconds per set, back straight, shoulders active. The carry is the most direct translation of grip strength into everyday usefulness - shopping bags, suitcases and DIY-store boxes included.

3. Pulling exercises without lifting straps. Rows, lat pulldowns and pull-ups train your grip automatically - as long as you leave the straps on the rack. If your fingers give out before your back does, that is information, not a defect. Deliberately run your last set strapless or add a strapless finisher set. Your forearms catch up within a few weeks.

4. Extras for the advanced. Hand grippers, towel hangs or a hangboard provide even more stimulus. On the hangboard: start with a clean progression, because finger joints and pulley tendons adapt slowly to that kind of load. If you are new to strength training, the first three building blocks will keep you busy anyway.

The whole thing fits into 10 minutes per session: two to three times a week, as the finisher to your normal training. Increase slowly, keep the movements clean, and give your forearms the same recovery you would give any other muscle.

One word on the supplement part of the equation: creatine does not push your grip up the dynamometer scale on its own - in the big pooled analyses, the classic creatine effect showed up mainly in large compound lifts such as the bench press and squat, not in the isolated handgrip test. I still take FitLine Creatine+ through my training weeks, because the sessions are what drag your grip upwards, and those are the sessions I want to show up for at full strength.

What grip does for daily life - and what it does not

A strong hand pays for itself immediately in daily life: the jam jar opens, the suitcase slides onto the shelf without protest, the climbing route holds until the third move, the shopping bag stops cutting into your fingers. If you do martial arts, tennis or bouldering, you feel the difference anyway - the forearms decide everything there.

At the same time, realism pays. Grip strength is an indicator, not a universal gauge: in the large PURE study it said nothing about falls, diabetes or fractures. It works like a thermometer for the strength of your whole body. The best way to raise it is full-body training - legs, back, chest - with your hands growing along for the ride. And a sudden, unexplained loss of strength in one hand is a different matter from ordinary training fatigue: that belongs in a doctor's hands, because nerves, tendons or the cervical spine can be behind it.

Your four-week starter plan

Make it concrete, so interest turns into a result:

1. Week 1 - take your baseline. How long can you hang from the bar? How far can you walk with two dumbbells? Note both numbers honestly. If your gym or physio offers a dynamometer test, take it - that is the gold standard.
2. Weeks 1 to 4 - two strength sessions plus a grip block. At the end of each: three sets of dead hangs (as long as you can hold, target 30 seconds) and two carries of 30 to 45 seconds. Plus your normal programme with strapless pulls.
3. Weekly progress. Add 5 seconds to your hang or one grip notch more weight on the carry. Small, but relentless.
4. Week 4 - retest. Compare your hang time with the starting value. If you have added 20 to 30 percent, your forearm muscles have understood the assignment.

The takeaway

Grip strength is the most underrated fitness number there is: measured in a second, linked to heart and mortality risk in large studies, and trainable within weeks. You need no special gear - just a bar, two dumbbells and ten minutes at the end of your sessions. Start with your first hang this week.

My setup is simple: FitLine Creatine+ travels with my strength sessions - and the grip itself grows through hanging, carrying and pulling, session by session.

Photo: liquene, CC BY 2.0.