Handy to know: does exercise increase your grip strength?

Let’s get to grips with the topic at hand. We don’t dabble in the currency of stereotypes — we’ve met some big, strong people who feel as if they’re handing you a trout instead of shaking your hand, while we’ve also met small people who run Table Mountain’s rocky paths every week who literally squeeze out a glimpse of your ancestors.

While some people use the handshake to partake in a futile prehistoric display of dominance, such as Donald Trump — we all remember his awkward handshakes while “introducing” himself to other world leaders — some of us just want to get it over and done with.

So-called “etiquette” around a handshake is that it should be firm, but not crush the other person’s hand. We’ve all encountered that awkwardness of presenting a hand, expecting something mild, and then having it squeezed much tighter than we expected. Either we wait for it to pass, or out of politeness, add a few pounds of force only for the other person to get excited and think we’ve started a squeezing competition.

Let’s not forget those that attempt to rotate your hand clockwise to move you into a submissive pose. YouTube is packed with body language experts. All very awkward, but then again, so is most of humanity.

I’ve dug around a little and  may have stumbled onto something important. Besides their obvious function, our hands, and their grip strength, may well hold clues to our health. In 2020, The Conversation ran an article titled “How strong your grip is says a lot about your health”. It cites a number of studies, including one called: “Grip strength: An indispensable biomarker for older adults” that was published in the journal Clinical Interventions in Ageing the year before.

It also references a study funded by the British Heart Foundation in 2018. According to an article on the foundation’s website, a weak handshake could be a sign of a failing heart. The article says: “Scientists at Queen Mary University of London have discovered that a weak grip can be associated with changes in the heart’s structure and function and could be used as a broad measure of someone’s health.”

The article in The Conversation goes on to say: “Loss of muscle tissue occurs all over the body when we develop certain health conditions and when we age. However, it can be difficult to measure strength in many places, which is why the hands are so useful. Their ability to produce both fine and force movements make them a good proxy for overall health.”

This is association, not causation. Let’s not trigger unnecessary panic. Drawing false inferences and inverting causal logic is the job of South Africans on Twitter, not fitness columns.

Perhaps, in your quest to construct handshaking stereotypes you have encountered the vitality of a healthy person, with a strong heart, who eats enough protein and calories to nourish their muscles.

If it worries you profusely, there are exercises you can do to improve your grip strength. These include crush exercises, support exercises and pinch exercises. You can train crush by squeezing grippers or a tennis ball, you can train support by hanging from a pull-up bar for as long as you can, and you can train pinch by squeezing two small weight plates together for as long as you can before they fall to the ground.

As it turns out, grip strength can reveal far more about you than your personality — so keep an eye on it for any unnatural changes. Once you get a grip you’ll find the little things in life far easier, such as opening bottles, carrying grocery bags and reciprocating post-Covid handshakes.