Grippers

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A typical hand gripper

A hand gripper being closed

1 Overview
2 Use
3 Strength Training Grippers
4 See also

[edit] Overview

Grippers are a device used for improving strength in the hands and forearms by training crushing grip. A typical gripper is made with a heavy coil spring with two handles, usually made of plastic or metal, attached to each end of the spring.

There are two main categories of grippers:

Sport grippers: These are the most common type of gripper, and are often found at sporting goods stores. They typically provide a resistance of 25-40 pounds (11-18 kiloponds or 110-180 Newton, and can be closed by nearly anyone with an average crushing grip.
Strength training grippers: These grippers offer much more resistance than sports grippers, ranging from 60 pounds (27 kiloponds or 270 Newton) of resistance up to 400 pounds (180 kiloponds or 1,800 Newton) or more. However, they can be difficult to find in stores, as they are a niche product, purchased mostly by grip enthusiasts. Most people, even those who train with weights, have trouble closing these grippers, unless they train their crushing grip regularly.

[edit] Use

The user holds the gripper in one hand and attempts to "close" the gripper by bringing the two handles together until they touch. Generally, the user will then release their grip and continue with more repetitions, or hold the gripper closed for an extended period of time.

[edit] Strength Training Grippers

The modern strength training gripper can be considered, by most of those who use these as tests of strength and as a training tool, to have been made by Warren Tetting and promoted and sold by Randall J Strossen of Ironmind (see link). Warren still makes grippers which are sold directly by himself and via [1] (Weightlifters Warehouse) under the name Beefbuilder's. Those who have bought from Warren directly have reported that, after hour-long or longer chats with him, they received perfectly customized models adjusted for their goals.
There are several technical aspects to consider when making grippers and they include but are not limited to the following:
- Spring tightness, also known as winding tightness
- Spring depth - If the wire used to make the spring is a standard length in all grippers (it does vary some) then how deep the spring has been set and how close the coil is to the handle also affects the force required to close the gripper.
- Handle spread - The distance between the inside edges of the handles. A smaller spread is easier to close, especially to users with smaller hands.
- Wire thickness - The diameter of the wire. On the very strongest / hardest strength training grippers this is very close to a half inch. Most are a few 100ths of an inch (a few quarters of a mm) up or down from a 1/4 inch (6 mm). Much less than that and you are back to store brought grippers.
- Handle length - Because leverage is involved, as the length of the gripper handles increases, so does the torque gained by the user. Therefore, a gripper with longer handles will require less force to close.
- Handle thickness - While thicker handles does not alter the amount of force required to shut the handles of the gripper, it does make it harder to grip, which increases the amount of muscular strength in the hands and forearms required to successfully close the gripper.
- Seasoning - When a gripper has just been manufactured, the spring will typically be stiff. The more times the gripper is closed, the more "seasoned" it becomes, meaning that the stiffness of the spring wears off and the gripper requires less force to close. Seasoning occurs most quickly when the gripper is new, and the seasoning process slows considerably as the number of closings on the gripper increases. Generally the progression of seasoning becomes negligible after the first several hundred closings.