Improve your grip with kettlebells

Kettlebells are a great tool for your grip because they can develop the grip in a number of different ways. They can be used to improve your grip strength, grip endurance and/or grip power.

Kettlebell snatches are a great exercise for grip power or grip endurance.
 At heavier loads, the snatch generates a huge amount of power and this will try to rip the bell from your hands at its lowest point. Here, your grip must fight to hold the bell as you convert this eccentric power, into an explosive concentric movement.

Bottom-up presses are great for developing grip strength because you must ‘crush’ the handle of the bell in order to keep it upright. This movement is done at a much slower pace than the kettlebell snatch, making it much more effective in its development of strength as opposed to power. A bottom-up clean and press would be a great combination of both grip power, and grip strength.

Using exercises such as double kettlebell farmers walks (2 bells in each hand) are excellent for grip strength as it greatly increases the circumference of the handles making them much more challenging to grasp, as opposed to a one bell in each hand farmers walk.

Programming:

If you are using kettlebells to improve your grip strength you could use one of these exercises * this category once a week, for example, Monday you could do some heavy snatches, Wednesday – bottom-up press and Friday double farmers walks. Alternatively, use all of them in one session and train your grip once and twice a week.