The jam jar grip test that shows how well you're ageing
The satisfaction to be had from removing a tough jam jar lid feels strangely British. Defeating a jar of a strawberry conserve requires determination little short of heroic. It's also, experts tell us, a superb way to gauge your overall health and even your potential longevity.
Grip strength has been declared one of the key health markers as we age. Richard W Bohannon, an academic and physical therapist based in North Carolina, wrote Grip Strength: An Indispensable Biomarker for Older Adults. He was building on earlier studies, including one carried out in the UK in 2014, which tracked grip across the average lifetime and noted how it mapped onto general health.
Bohannon says: 'Grip strength helps predict how long we may expect to live across an array of cardiovascular, pulmonary, and other diseases. One study found weak grip strength to be more predictive of mortality than blood pressure.'
The jam jar moment usually requires about 16kg of twisting force. Scott Goodfellow, a joint managing director of Wilkin & Sons preserves, says: 'It's always a careful balance between creating a robust seal whilst keeping ease of opening.' Your ability to generate that force with your hands is a very reliable indicator of the strength you have and the lifestyle that's created that strength.
Why is grip strength so important?
Bohannon says: 'Strength is a generalised construct. So, apart from a specific disorder like a stroke, a patient weak in one part of the body will probably be weak elsewhere.' The grip is like a small sample of your overall strength and strength is powerful indicator of longevity.
Peter Attia, a podcaster, author and medical researcher, is a huge advocate of grip as a measure. Speaking on a recent podcast, he said: 'If you take people with the highest grip strength compared with the lowest grip strength, the people with the highest have a 70 per cent lower chance of getting and dying from dementia.'
How do you measure your grip strength?
If you want to know where you are in the grip strength stakes, the professionals have a specific gadget that measures the power of your squeeze called a dynamometer. These can be bought online but most cost a few hundred pounds.
A less precise, but still valid, approach is to pick up an old-fashioned (non-digital) weighing machine, hold it in front of your body and squeeze, one hand at a time. This will give you a number with which to chart your progress. A good score if you're a woman aged 50-59 is 55-58kg, combined left and right hands, for a man the same age 102-109kg.
So how can we improve our grip strength?
Exercises that engage the grip and your overall strength are an important part of your wellbeing regime but the grip itself has no magical ability to improve your health, as Attia says, 'if people say I'm going to buy a squeezer and sit at my desk all day, that's not what it means'. Unless you are a climber or a particularly vigorous concert pianist, there is no point developing grip in isolation.
Brett Sizeland, the head of fitness programme Sustainable Strength, explains that just making simple changes such as carrying your shopping home can can be a game changer.
'Grip strength one of the most overlooked areas in training, yet it has huge functional carryover – especially when we think about longevity and staying strong for life,' he explains. 'That's why I program 'carry work' as standard across all client plans. It's simple, effective, and hits multiple areas at once – grip, core, legs, and lungs.' Plus you can start very gently at home with very little equipment.
The other key exercise when building grip is the dead hang. This is literally just hanging from a bar (or safe door frame) and maintaining your position, using your hands and upper body. Sam Quinn, a personal training lead at Nuffield Health says: 'The dead hang is simple but very effective. This exercise has many benefits from improving grip strength, improving upper body strength, and improving shoulder mobility.'
Quinn suggests two-to-four sets of hangs from 20 seconds to two minutes in duration. He says you could try starting with a feet-supported hang (this is with your feet resting in front of you, removing some of your body weight, using a bench). Quinn adds it's worth ensuring you have basic upper body conditioning before you attempt your first hang. Dead hangs are not way to go if you've never set foot in a gym.
Exercises
As we age it's a good idea to start by building upper body strength and grip with a less intense approach.
Here Rosemary Mallace, 74, who runs StrongAfterSixty classes on Youtube for older people suggests three very simple exercises.
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