It is not novelty that the key to performance is thorough training. What differentiates the winning athletes is a complete and comprehensive training program that will exercise every segment of the body. Surprisingly, although fun and simple to perform, handgrip training is missing from the majority of exercise protocols.

An athlete's body is similar to a chain. In other words, its functional structure organizes around a series of relationships between the diverse ?links? that build this chain. Unless every link meets adequate strengthening actions, the entire balance of the chain breaks. This means that the body's resistance (be it natural or built) is diminishes significantly simply because he or she has not taken sufficient caution to deal with a certain aspect in the whole picture of necessary exercises.

A great athlete once observed that tightening his fist caught in a reaction all the muscles of the arms up to the shoulder and the back. The anatomical structure sustains this reaction. Look at the body as if it were a meticulously organized construction. Muscles have origins and insertions on different segments of the arm. In this manner, they direct strength trajectory over joints. This demonstrates that omitting hand strength training in an exercise program is a grave error. On the contrary, such practice should become one of the most important exercises included in an athlete's regular training program.

There are sports in which hand strength is critical, such as climbing, martial arts, weight lifting, hockey, tennis, golf. When climbing athletes use their hands and feet to ascend steep surfaces, very strong hand and upper body muscles are essential for the completion of all of these movements. Judo or Japanese martial arts have standard hand techniques to immobilize the opponent and throw him to the ground. It is obvious that a strong grip is essential for correct and efficient execution of such maneuvers. In tennis as in golf or hockey sustained strong grip must be maintained on the racket (golf or hockey stick), apart from that, also required is strength in all postural movements of the wrist.

As we have already stated, hand strength consolidation become one of the exercises included in the daily program of an athlete. A healthy training should interest all aspects of the hand, balancing the activity of antagonist muscles (flexors versus extensors). For strengthening the flexors of the hand and forearm, a special device called gripper is available. Classically, a gripper includes a coil that provides a resistance to the closing maneuver. The strength of the coil is usually around 60 pounds (accessible to anyone with average hand strength). There are also grippers with increased resistance, up to 400 pounds, designed for those who put emphasis in their training on grip strength. These latter types are rather hard to find.

There is now available a specially designed gripper called vice gripper with adjustable resistance and optimum sized knurled handles. Its resistance varies by moving the two springs away from the hinge of the device. Easy to use outside the gym, designed for gradual training of the hand strength, it is the ideal device for completing the training of an athlete.

Hand strength training is easy and fun to execute and shouldn't miss from the training protocol of any athlete. Either for strength athletes or for a wide range of other different sports, handgrip exercising is necessary to complete a comprehensive program that will prove to be the key to performance.