Today, we are going to talk a bit about grip. I hear a lot about injuries/chronic pain/tweeks (let you in on a secret, all the same thing) in the elbows and the shoulders. Now I will say first and foremost, that a stable shoulder is the pivotal part of creating a stable upper body for all movements. And I will focus on shoulders in a post for another today. But today, it is about grip.
Your feet are where rubber meets the road. It is imperative to have good ankle mobility and stability to perform lower body movements. Well, the hands are the feet of the upper body (stay with me). The wrists are the ankles, the elbow is the knee, and the shoulder is the hip. See it? Without proper grip on the object in question (barbell, pull up bar, dumbbell, even the ground for pushups), suffering ensues upriver into these other joints. It would appear that your grip must change for all of these different objects. In some cases, you are correct (you can't get a full-blown death grip on the ground, but you can create torque through your hands for external shoulder rotation, for another day), but for the most part, there is a proper way to grip almost any object you can get your hand around. And it all pivots around pinky position.
Below I have some pictures of my hand around a regular sized barbell. Note the pinky knuckle positions:
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| Good: Top most knuckle over bar. Stable wrist. |
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| Bad: Second knuckle from hand over bar. Wrist relaxed. |
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| Bad: Last pinky knuckle over bar. Wrist lax. |
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| Usually Bad: Thumb over bar, not wrapped. Pinky knuckle behind bar. |
Hand Pinky Knuckle Over Bar: with the pinky knuckle of the hand over the bar, is the most stable, and here is why. For pulling positions (pullups, deadlifts, dumbbell rows), this helps in two ways. It places the shoulder in a better position to create torque and external rotation (the most stable position for the shoulder, more later). Secondly, it puts more tension in the "front" of the arm (palm side), which is the stronger and larger portion of the forearm. Notice the slight bend in the wrist, this indicates that the larger flexor musculature of the forearm is activated. Want some proof it is a stronger position, watch what professional arm-wrestlers do with their wrists before the fight begins.
Distal Knuckles Over Bar: With the second position, and the third, where the hand begins to slip to the outer knuckles, you suffer two tendencies. First, the shoulder is now much more free to turn inwards (internal rotation), and any movement in that shoulder for movements like deadlifts and pullups that is not part of the intended movement can quickly lead to excessive wear and tear, tears and stresses, and boy oh boy some pain. Secondly, now the weaker flexors (and extensors) of the forearm are activated, making it much harder to grip, and therefore your hand begins to slip, leading to less forearm activation, etc. etc. until the bar is no longer in your hands, but your finger tips.
Monkey Grip: The last picture shows the popular "thumb over" grip (or what I call the monkey grip). Many people take this grip more for comfort than anything, and if you have the grip strength and ability to maintain hand position, go for it. But with the thumb-over grip, you can see it is much more difficult to keep the pinky knuckle over the bar, thus keeping external rotation.
Along with instability in your shoulder with these weaker grips, you are also creating more rotational stress on that forearm, and into the elbow. I hear a lot of concerns from people with the thumb-over grip for dumbbell and barbell rows, and pullups, that they are feeling a sharp pain in the medial portion of their elbow. I would most likely attribute this to the fact that with the monkey grip, you are concentrating all of your stress (weight of barbell, dumbbell, body weight hanging) onto a very select few muscles in the forearm (mainly the palmaris longus and flexor carpi radialis, for you fellow anatomy geeks out there). These muscles attach to the same location (the medial epicondyle of the humerus, or the inside of your elbow). Picture this...you are hanging from a group of cables. If you hold on to each cable equally, you are fine, but as soon as you let go of a group, it puts a lot of stress on the few cables you are holding on to. When you don't have a proper grip, you are doing the same thing, using only a few cables/muscles, and putting excessive stress on one anchor point. On a similar note, if you have overactive (tight) forearm muscles, the same thing can happen, since those muscles are pulling more excessively than the other muscles. Roll it out!
A note, this grip talk is good for pulling, but a different grip (for a different post) is preferred for pressing movements (overhead presses, bench presses, dips, etc.)
So the next time you grip a pullup bar (or dumbbell or barbell, just think big pinky knuckle on the opposite side of wrist), make a better decision with your grip. It make some getting used to, but it is worth going down a bit in weight (let's be honest, there is no award for heaviest dumbbell row) to keep from having nagging, chronic pain in the shoulders and the elbows... right?
Stay Fit.
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| It came in! Now I am NASM CPT, FNS certified, TRX and CrossFit Level 1 certificated! It'll never get boring! |
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