WHY IS GRIP STRENGTH IMPORTANT?

Grip strength is widely used as a measure of general physical preparedness. A strong grip is useful for a range of sports, like rock climbing, gymnastics and wrestling, as well everyday activities, like opening a jar of peanut butter or lifting boxes. Grip strength can also be an indicator of overall health. The Journal of Strength and Conditioning research deemed that grip strength is a predictor of muscular endurance and overall strength while other studies have found a link between heart health and muscle strength. The bottom line is that grip strength is important to your overall health.

Background

Twelve Average Joe's (five females and seven males) were selected from an office to participate in a grip study. Each participant used Jamar’s digital hand dynamometer to complete a total of twelve squeezes in three different grip positions at notch two of the dynamometer. The three grip position were straight down, at 90 degrees, and straight up. Additionally, each participants hand length and hand span were measured.

Is Hand Size an Indicator of Grip Strength?

Each participants hand length (wrist crease to end of middle finger) and hand span (thumb to pinky) were measured. To find out if hand size is an indicator to grip strength a k-means clustering was used to place our participants into three groups. Our participants fall into the following three groups: Large Hands, Average Hands, and Small Hands.

It is important to note here that no one actually has “large” hands, all participants have either average or small hands compared to typical hand size averages. While these participants are just a bunch of Average Joes, there are still important differences to reveal…

Large Hand Group: This group has an ever-so-slightly smaller hand length to the average hand group, but has a noticeably larger hand span than the average hands group, deeming them the large hand group. This group produced roughly 28 more pounds of grip strength power than the average hand group and a whopping 50 more pounds of grip strength power than the small hand group.

Average Hand Group: While this group had a slightly longer hand length than the large hand group, their hand span was noticeably smaller. This group created approximately 20 more pounds of grip strength power than the small hand group.

Small Hand Group: This group had both a shorter hand length and hand span than the other two groups. This group’s hand span was over an inch shorter than the large hand group about half an inch shorter than the average hand group.

Hand Size DOES Indicate Grip Strength

So, it turns out hand size does indicate grip strength. It is clear that both hand length and hand span play an important role in grip strength power, and from our small sample size, we see that a longer hand span may contribute more to grip strength.

Not surprisingly, other studies have shown that longer finger spans correlate with hand grip strength in athletes and non-athletes. To simplify it… the longer the fingers, the better the grip strength.

What about Athletes?

The hand size of quarterbacks is consistently a hot topic at the NFL combine, and the 6-foot 7, 285 pound Aaron Judge definitely has larger hands than you and I.

So, how do athletes differ from the Average Joe? My next post will look at hand size and grip strength of top high school athletes from 2019 summer baseball showcases. Athletes typically have larger hands than the average human - Odell Beckham Jr. has 10 inch hands compared to our Average Joe's max hand length of 8 inches – so it will be interesting to see how top high school athletes compare to the Average Joe.