Wednesday 17 October 2012

Training hands and fingers.

Last week my wife decided to start doing pull ups. She does a lot of cardio but she's not used to bodyweight exercises so I was quite curious to see her first attempt at the pull-up bar.
On the first day she did 2 complete pullups and 5 negative pullups (starting from up and going down slowly), but it took a week for her to do a set of 5 pullups. Not bad for a beginner.
I found it quite odd that on the first days she claimed that the major stress she experienced while performing pullups was keeping the grip of the hands and of the fingers on the bar.
I could imagine a lot of stress in the shoulders and in the arms, not in the hands. Well, in an early stage of my life I've done a lot of climbing, so my hands and fingers are well trained even if now I am not doing anything for that part of the body. Obviously for someone that never climbed, hand strenght is something that need to be built.
The most popular way to train hands and fingers are hand-grippers:
Hand-grippers.

They are very inexpensive (I've seen them being sold for 4 euros) and durable, so I highly recommend to buy  one. They are very easy to carry in a pocket or in the car, so you can do some squeezing at the bus stop or at the traffic light. I can't imagine an exercise that can be performed so often and in so different situations like this one.
If you want to avoid spending at all, you can use also an old tennis ball. Just keep it in the palm of you hand and press your fingers all around it.
This simple exercise will strenghten your fingers and your hands, but it will benefit your wrists and forearms too.

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