Latest news with #gripstrength
Telegraph
14-05-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
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. Rotations with a book
The Independent
06-05-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Want to live longer? This tennis ball trick could be a longevity ‘grand slam'
Have a tennis ball in your garage? It may unlock clues into your lifespan. A quick test of strength with a tennis ball may be able to tell you if you're going to live to 100 years old. Well, grip strength is the amount of force with which a person can squeeze their hand. By around the age of 50, it tends to decline, due to the natural loss of muscle mass. 'You can't prevent the decline, but you can slow it down,' Jennifer Schrack, an epidemiologist and director of the Center on Aging at Johns Hopkins, recently told TIME. Physicians have found that a person's grip is a good indicator of their health and longevity, and can help to assess overall musculoskeletal strength. So good grip strength with a tennis ball might tell you whether or not you'll make the century mark. A Finnish study found that participants who became centenarians had the highest grip strength, compared to others in their study. However, according to researchers, it can also be indicative of biological age, indicating whether the body is functioning better or worse than its chronological age. More muscle strength could be good for survival, while weaker muscle strength makes it more likely a person will die sooner should they develop a chronic medical problem, according to Harvard Medical School's Dr. Howard LeWine. Other studies have linked a decline in grip strength to worrying conditions, including heart disease, arthritis, type 2 diabetes, cancer and osteoporosis. 'This has led grip strength to be considered an important biomarker when assessing health, particularly in older adults,' UCLA Health says. These and related findings have led to methods of assessment such as the tennis ball 'squeeze test.' "Simply squeeze it for as long as you can before your grip fatigues. Being able to maintain a maximal squeeze on something like a tennis ball for 15-30 seconds would be a good standard to strive for,' Joshua Davidson, a strength and conditioning researcher at the University of Derby, told the BBC. The test works the hand muscles. UCLA Health also recommends wringing out a wet towel, hanging from a pull-up bar, lifting a weight with pinched fingers and carrying dumbbells as you walk. 'These work various combinations of muscle groups and improve your crush, pinch and support grips,' its doctors said. Over time, people should see improvements in their grip. But, working any muscles in the lower and upper body may improve grip strength. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says adults need two days of muscle-strengthening activity each week, in addition to at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity. 'You can work out at home either using specialist equipment or just things you have around the house. Two to three sets of single-arm wrist curls, with reps of between 10 and 20, is a good exercise to start with. If you have a kettlebell at home, bicep curls are also good exercises to try,' he said.
