Why Your Grip Strength Isn’t Improving (For BJJ) ft. Raspberry Ape

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Transcript

Why Grip Strength Matters In BJJ

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Grip strength training for BJJ. It's funny, ladies and gentlemen. I happen to have one of the strongest gripping humans I've ever met in my life, Dan Strauss, the Raspberry Ape. We're very, very pleased to have Dan here. And I want to open this because for all of you out there, it doesn't matter if you train in the Ghee or no Ghe, having a strong grip is important. And Dan is legendary for having a very strong grip. Now, when I visited him at his uh man strength cave of much repute, he uh got out the grip strength dynamometer. This you might have seen it, it's got like a gauge, sometimes you've got the digital read, and you've got to squeeze the fuck out of it. And this determines whether you're a man or not. Or a strong woman who might be stronger than a man. Um, and Dan said to me, he led in I felt I felt safe momentarily, and then I thought, hang on, am I being set up here? And he said, look, look, a weak man, a weak man will get 50, 60 kilos. A strong man, he might get, you know, 75, 80 kilos. A really strong man will get plus of a hundred kilos. Uh and he's like, there you go. And I was like, okay, fucking anyway. Needless to say, it probably wasn't adjusted correctly. I'm putting that out now. I it was quite small. I need a bit more each. Then just pats me on the back. I'm like, fuck and let me try my left hand. 59 and a half kilos. And I think Dan just like crushes like something ridiculous, like breaks the thing, like 150 kilos. Something, something not quite that, but something ridiculous. It always sounds good. And I just was like, fuck. What would I expect? Right. And I think what I have um always grip strength is such an important part of jujitsu, but there's not many people who really go deep on the history of grip training, unless you're into that old school folding frying pan, strong man, bending nails, tearing decks of cards, which Dan actually showed me how to do, which is amazing. Um, this man knows grip. And so I wanted to take this time for us to kind of pick his brain on the differences, you know. Obviously, he has his favorite stuff, but what is the difference when you're training for geek gripping versus no geek gripping? And let's unpack that, Daniel.

The Grip Training Framework

Crush, Support, Pinch, And More

Concepts Beat Favorite Exercises

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Yeah, um, yeah, okay, let's get straight into it. So essentially, my philosophy of grip training is that I have a framework that separates grip into the different types of grip. So one of the big misconceptions or mistakes that so many people make when when it comes to grip is they they see grip as basically anything that you're doing with your hands. Yep. In the same way, if we were training full-body stuff, and I said, Okay, what are we doing in the gym today? And you just went, body. You went, okay, well, what's the first exercise? Body. You went, okay, what's the second exercise? You know, it it's it's so broad. No, you know, you have a squat, you have a hinge, you have a lunge, you have a vertical push, vertical. You know, so you have these different movements of the body, and the hands, wrists, and forearms are incredibly complex. They're like uh Swiss Army knife. You can make all these different shapes and you can do all these different things, and you can create all of these different positions. And I divide those into their different grip types. Right. So, for example, you have the dynamometer. What's the dynamometer testing? It's what I would call crush. It's your ability to close your hand against resistance the entire way. So imagine uh closing a hand gripper or crushing an apple or something like that. Then you have support strength. So that's just holding something that isn't giving you resistance as the hand closes. That's grabbing onto a barbell. That's closed hand support, you know, you're grabbing onto something where your hand can wrap all the way around. Then you have open hand support, that's your thick-handled stuff. That would be if you're grabbing a wrist, your hand can't wrap all the way around. Your close hand support would be if you're grabbing a lapel or a pistol grip or something, your hand can wrap around. Uh, then you have vertical gripping. So a lot of the time, yeah, exactly. A lot of the time the hand is in a horizontal position when it grips. If you imagine holding a dumbbell or a kettlebell or a barbell, okay, now imagine climbing a rope. Your wrist goes into only deviation and you have to generate force at that angle there. That's a completely different type of grip. You don't train that at all, you're just training in a horizontal position and then your wrist goes vertical, you're not gonna be able to transfer that strength through the same way. So that would be grip fighting from guard from standing. Um, you have your finger strength, you know, building the strength of the tendons in the fingers, holding in isometrically at many positions. That's where your climbers are going to be very strong. That's that's where in the gear, your pit your your pocket grips. Um you have pinch, which is your finger opposing your thumb, developing developing the strength of the thumb, and crosses over to your ability to to to to to have your um open hand support, your thick bar stuff, and that's just the hand. Then you go into the wrist, you have flexion, extension, deviation, supination, pronation, all of these different movements, and that all put together is what is encompassed by the word grip. So for me, everything that I teach, I have a course out, I have uh uh I wrote a book called The Grappler's Guide to Grip Training for all of the questions that anyone's wondering how the and it does, it's not just for grapplers. The idea is the same for anyone, but that was just aimed for grapplers. Um, and so is this um on Ape Academy or you can get the ebook on on ApeAcademy Online.com, uh, but or you can go to Amazon, get a physical copy. Well, look at that. You and you and Bezos, eh? Yeah, me and Bezos are like this. Famous as hell. Yeah, taking taking a significant cut of the money. Absolutely. But uh yeah, I'm I'm a big lover of books, so I couldn't possibly spend all the time writing a book and then only have it as a new to have to have the physical product. Um, yeah, so I I read uh released a book a couple of years ago, and all of the stuff I teach, it is all based off of the framework. If you understand, and and it's very we talk about jujitsu and grip training uh more abstractly for a second. I view I guess I view everything through the same philosophy as I view jujitsu. Jiu Jitsu was the first thing that I really went deep in. So the way that I think about jiu-jitsu is the way I think about life, you know, and it happens to a lot of people. Um what I mean by that is you know, I don't I don't think of jujitsu as a series of techniques as a lot of people do. You have these fundamental positions and concepts, and then you can be creative and you can problem solve your way around those. In the same way that I look at grip training, which is I so techniques would be exercises, it's not about the exercises, but what's your favorite exercise? I go, it's not really about that. Kind of irrelevant, yeah. So your positions in jiu-jitsu is your different types of grip, your concepts are your different ways of using the hand and wrist, and then you can find, you can come up if you understand, if you teach someone a technique in jujitsu, they can only do that technique. But if you teach them the concept around that technique, they can find ways of doing the getting a similar result in a different way. Same for the grip strength. If you show them an exercise, they know one exercise, it's with a band. Then they go to a gym, there's no bands. Oh, I can't train that thing. Yeah. No, no, no. This is how this wrist works. Oh, I can use a hammer, I can use a band, I can use a dumbbell handle, I can use a belt, I can use all of these different things. So that's uh the crux of what I teach when it comes to grip training. But you've you've synthesized this, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Like I if please correct me if I'm wrong here, but from understanding, observing your content, all the stuff you do, talking to you previously about this, been in your wonderland of grip, you know, you've taken principles and ideas from arm wrestling, um, from rock climbing, from powerlifting, from like there's so many tools. Yeah. And you know, and but that's like jujitsu, right? What is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu?

Creative Grip Builds And New Drills

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Okay, it's a little bit judo. Yep. It's a bit of Sambo, it's a bit of catch wrestling came in here, a bit of wrestling came in here. It's the same thing. Oh, for sure. So it's like for me, I'm trying to create the jujitsu, the grappling, quote unquote, where you take, what's that Bruce Lee quote? You take what's useful, discard what's not, add what's your own. That's what I'm doing, right? So yeah, I take the inspiration of the strongest arms in the world are armrests, the strongest fingers in the world are climbers, the you know, strong men are good at this and and powerlifters are good at that. And then you can, if you understand the core concepts behind it, you can distill the most effective stuff from everywhere. And then where I I really, you know, I think everyone needs a creative outlet in life. We're talking about creativity in the car yesterday, Juicy. Um, everyone needs a creative outlet. Uh I can't paint or draw or play music. For me, creativity comes in the form of jujitsu and it comes in the form of of um creating a stimulus for the body and the entire body, but especially the grip. And and and I came up with a new exercise yesterday, mate.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

You are so playful in the gym. I saw what is and is there a name for this? Did you see this show? The um the Olympic bar with the band and the kettlebell, and you're kind of doing pull-ups, but you're also doing a wrist roller at the same. Like, what the fuck is going on, Daniel? I know you're a bit mad, and I know you're obsessed with this thing. It was after you did that WEC workshop. It was definitely it it felt WEC uh induced. No, because you also had Juju doing it, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:38

So what the one where we're hanging off the barbell? I didn't I didn't come up with that one. All right, that was Milson. He's he's awesome, but oh he he's he's great, yeah. Yeah, the mad scientist. Mad scientist. Um what's that called? What the fuck? Hanging hanging wrist roller, right? Hanging wrist roller, yeah, yeah. How's it work? Uh imagine you get a barbell. Essentially, if you get a barbell and you load up one side, you put it on the rack, you load up one side so that you can hang off the other side. And if you grab onto the bit where the weights would go and you try and walk around. So then if you that's really the exercise, but what you do is you put a band on it and attach a kettlebell, and that just gives you an indication that you're moving it, that you're you know that the kettlebell's not giving you any resistance, but it's just showing you that you are lifting the weight up. Uh, and it's super tough.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

So you tie the band, you prussic the band so it doesn't slip.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

So then it wraps around as you climb it.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Yeah, you know how to do a wrist roller on a barbell? We'll get we'll get Jack, we'll get Jack to edit the clip in of you doing it. It's mad. Yeah, you you you get a barbell on on you can get a band and wrap it around the end of a barbell and you can use it as a wrist roller. Basically, you're just doing that, but your palms are facing you and you're hanging like you're doing a pull-up. So, like, what is that training? That's training um you are training thick handle, your resistance against extension, and uh to a degree you are isometric. It's a bit of extension work, it's like resistance against extension when you don't want to move, it's extension work when you do want to move. So it's like quite a dynamic way of training the grip. But that's it like you're in here the whole time, yeah. You're trying to. You're about 90 degrees with the arms. Yeah, okay. Yeah, it's a good exercise, but but but that's it. You can, you know, we came up with a with an exercise yesterday. I was training a um uh Iron Octopus School of Physical Culture in Perth. Great with that with Alex Flores, yeah. Great name. And he has some globe barbells, some solid globe barbells. And he was talking at, you know, I taught a little workshop there a couple of days beforehand, and he said that he was there the next day and he was sort of playing around with some of the concepts, and uh, you know, he was pulling from the globe uh because I was showing some exercises where you you can do pull-ups or you can do rows with the globe. And I said, wait a minute, we've got the ball on one side, we've got the ball on the other side. If we stick that in the corner, we put bands around the power rack, and then you can use it like a snap down. Oh right. I'll show you the video afterwards if you get on my phone. And boom, you got a new exercise there. And it feels awesome because you're you're training wrist flexion with an open hand, like it rotates a little bit, so then you're having to adapt from wrist tension to finger tension. You know, you can you can do holds with it, so you're engaging the lats as well. You can do short pulls with it, you can oscillate it, you can release it and catch it, so you're working a little bit of reactive grip strength, and uh there's a limitless number of ways and and things that and and that's the other thing. One of the funny things about my gym is I have I probably have more grip training equipment than anyone else on the planet or close to it. Like it's a ridiculous collection, literally hundreds of pieces of kit. You don't need any of that. You really don't. I have that stuff because that's what I nerd out over, and that's for fun, and I like to collect things. You don't need anything. You go, okay, how are we gonna train grip in this room? I go, okay, well, you know, if we can get this table on the side, this works, this is a good size for the table's what? That's an inch thickness. Okay, so we can do some thin pinch work here. Okay, I mean we've got some we've got some uh tripods over there. Well, if you turn the tripod upside down, we can do some supination protection. The MacGyver of grip. Oh, look, he's got he's got the book there.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Like, if we do escape this room now, he's like grip training.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Everywhere, everywhere I go, yeah, 100%. You know, you've got a curtain over there. Well, if we took that curtain down, we could we could tie that onto a bottle of water and then we could do some wrist supination with it. There's everywhere you look, if you understand, if you just look at exercises as exercises, well, there's no dumbbells here, so I guess we can't do anything. Or there's no barbell here, I guess we can't. No, no, no, no, no. It doesn't work like that.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

This uh this makes me think, you know, there's a um there's there's a strong message in the I'd say in in this in the S and C world um that you hear a lot, which is all about this idea of GPP, right? Like sticking with the fundamental stuff, pushing, pulling, squatting, hinging, etc. Great stuff. And that and and it and it it marks its position, this message, by clearly alienating the fuckery that we all see. You know, people training with a bunch of different bands, and you know, you could say that some of the the Nadia Aguila functional patterns stuff, like that's the far end of the spectrum, right? Yeah, yeah. Fuckery, ineffective. But what what you you know, a lot of the stuff you do and a lot of what you're describing, I I'm thinking that people from that real conservative position would be like, that's fuckery. Like that is why aren't you just doing a dump? Yeah. You speak on on that.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Yeah, absolutely. It's such a good question. And look, there's a few things. Uh, again, I don't, I don't think uh a lot of power lifters, and this was me 15 years ago. Make no mistake. I've been there. I uh it's I I didn't I didn't bypass that journey. I just went through it and came out the other side. Most people they find it and then they sit up camp and they, you know, get a mortgage and they build the fence around it and they lose the keys and and they're locked in there forever. I went through there and I said, you know, what what's your definition of strength? And I'd say, what'd you squat, what'd you bench, and what'd you deadlift? I'd hurt my back so I couldn't deadlift, so I was just saying, What would you squat what'd you bench? Um and then you realize that actually, no, it's a very arbitrary metric.

SPEAKER_03 15:21

No.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

And actually, I mean that's a whole other topic. You say, Well, what is strength? Well, it's relative per person. Yeah. For me, you know, how how big a stone can you pick up? You know, how many pull-ups can you do with your body weight? You know, can you pull yourself off off of that cliff? Because if you can squat for 300 kilos, but if you're hanging from a cliff, you can't get up. Doesn't sound very strong to me. I know how to kill you.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

Yeah. Well, no, it's in it's interesting because I I saw someone post something recently that said, When your sport is the exercises, like when you get to powerlifting strongly, people become way more territorial about the like sumo versus conventional. Like, but if you're an athlete and you do the exercises to help you do the sport, you actually don't care about the exercise as long as it gives you what you want.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

In the words of the great Kenny Powers, I play real sports, so I'm not trying to be the best at exercise. That's right. It's so good. The guy's like, I'm doing triathlon. And he's like, sure, nerd. Um, but yeah, to answer your question, um, again, it goes back to the concepts like, am I working push, am I working pull, am I working a squat? Am I hitting all of the fundamental movements? If I'm able to load those movements in ways that don't have a barbell, or the barbell is in front of me, or the barbell is in a zertier, or I'm using a kettlebell, or I'm using a sandbag, or I'm using a stone. If I'm able to hit those movements, what does it really matter? But it sort of goes beyond that. Because ultimately, strength training, I believe, is a fundamental tenant for human uh happiness, longevity, and capability. I think every single person in the world should be doing some form of strength training. And just quickly beyond that, a lot of people see strength training as something that you do when you are young, so you look better, so you can play sport better. But the reality is if I could make us a half the population strength train, it's not going to be the 20 and 30 year olds, it's going to be the 50 and 60 year olds. Yeah. Because that's when it actually matters. The thing is, starting strength training when you're 50 is much harder than continuing strength training from when you're 25. I believe that everyone should be doing some form of strength training. And if you don't believe me, go to an old people's home and and and look at the people who are struggling to stand up, who are getting physio and and physical therapy, where they are just doing very, very light weights to try and extend their capacity to move their body as long as their mind is still alive and their heart still pumping. And that's a situation that nobody wants to be in.

SPEAKER_03 18:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

So at its core, everyone should be doing strength training. Now, the problem is when you become dogmatic about what that looks like, you alienate a huge percentage of the population. Because the reality is, even if squat, bench, deadlift, pull up, bent over row, etc., etc., is the most optimal way to get stronger and keep even if it was. Let's not even argue that for a second. Some people just don't want to do that. And if you tell anyone who's doing anything else that isn't that, that they're wasting their time, that it's pure fuckery, what you end up doing is not converting those people to traditional barbell lifts. You convert them outside of that that strength training circle entirely. So really unless it's Pilates, then fuck you.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

I mean, no, I mean very inclusive. I like Pilates. I know you do, only done it once. Because there's something spent on nothing.

unknown 18:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

No, but I'm for me, I I also did Pilates for a period of time and I got dramatically weaker. Yeah. Uh no, it's not true. It's different.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Yeah, but but but you're not you're not who's Pilates is aimed at.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

I know that because I'm haven't got the money for it, and I also am educated. But hey, if you're stupid and you got money, you want to throw it away. Good luck to you. Reform of Pilates. Woo! Um, but but but you you get the idea, right? Yeah, you don't So you try you want to get more people healthier and involved in strength training, whatever that looks like.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

And and and I guess strength training is maybe to even too specific a term. It's it's movement, right? Okay, it can play a sport.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

Oh you can play a sport.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Can I see your spinal wave?

SPEAKER_00 19:37

G money. Shout out. Shout out. Uh move boys. Um it's it's it's anything. It's movement, it's physical activity. Strength training is better, you know. Strength training is more important overall than just pure movement, but pure movement is better than no movement. Get everyone should have some sort of movement practice, whether that's jujitsu, whether that is a a pure, you know, like a what would be considered a movement discipline, or whether it's a strength training, you have to use your body because it is use it or lose it. And anyone coming in and discouraging people from doing anything based on their own dogma about what they believe is best, I think is ultimately not just harmful to the individual, but harmful for the human species in general. With you. So find what I say is find something that you like and do it. Nice. And and and if it's not the optimal thing, it's the same with diet, right? What's the what's the most optimal diet? The one that's the most optimal form of exercise, the one that you're actually going to do that you enjoy.

Intensity, Compliance, And Progress

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Uh yeah, great. I appreciate that response. I also think too that um, you know, for for folks listening who who see your stuff and go, fuck yeah, that looks sick. Yeah, I think, but but then also maybe try some of it or maybe fuck around in the gym and like aren't getting where they want to be. I think that the missing link there for folks is the ability to apply intensity and intention to what you're doing. And I think that's what's awesome about the stuff I see you doing is that you take like you are being creative and you're experimenting, but then you're finding ways to make something effective and included in that is the intensity. Yes. So that you can get a stimulus and get a result from it.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Versus the stuff that you see where someone's just fucking around. Yeah. And it's clearly lacking intensity and focus.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Yeah. And also, you know, please do bear in mind if you are, if you do follow my content, the stuff that you see me post is not everything that I do. You know, I'm doing uh yeah, okay, maybe I'm not doing a barbell deadlift, but I'm doing a sandbag pickup and I'm doing some full I'm I am doing push, I am doing pull, I am doing squat, I am doing hinge. It may not be what a power lift is doing, but I am working that full body stuff in a more quote unquote. Traditional manner, and then the other stuff that I'm adding in is more fun. But you know, the grip stuff and the creativity, if you just sprinkle a little bit of that in with the with the you know, if you do squat bench deadlift on one day, you probably shouldn't squat and deadlift on the same day, but just for argument's sake, you do squat bench deadlift on one day. Let's 500, baby. Hey, that's the most complete workout there is, Daniel. Jesus. But even if you're doing that all in one day and you do that the same every single time, you're gonna get bored quite quickly, potentially. I'm can't I'm almost jealous of the people who can do that, you know, they do the same workout for 20 years and they never get bored on it. Fair play. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Um it's like that rich piano video where he's eating some slop out of a Tupperware. Yeah, yeah, fair play. It tastes so good.

Simple Gi And No Gi Priorities

SPEAKER_00 22:40

It's got everything you're doing. You've got to respect it. I wish I could do that, but I can't. But even if you just do the same thing every day and you sprinkle in, okay, I'm gonna superset the squat with this fun exercise. And I'm gonna superset this with the fun ex what does that do? It increases your compliance to doing the whole thing because there's a bit of enjoyment there. You gotta uh you gotta increase the uh enjoyment in what you do because without enjoyment the compliance goes down. Same as jujitsu. You don't enjoy training jujitsu, you're not gonna go, yeah, which is why it's so important as an instructor. Your job is less teaching people jujitsu and more having those people passionate and enthusiastic to come through the door. Yeah, mate.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

I just want to get a little bit more specific on grip here.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Yeah, you want to talk about exactly what exercises for getting no. No, no, no, no. I don't no no no, not really. Because that was the question you asked. I didn't answer it.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

How dare you? That's fine. I knew you'd do it, Dan. You fucking rambling genius. Um, that's fine. Uh let me pull it back on track, folks. Um, no, it's one of those things that the thing I became aware of was uh many years ago I started getting into rock climbing because I started jujitsu and I was like, who has the best group in the world? Uh and at that time my take on it was rock climbers. You know, they could do single-finger pull-ups and you know, just insane things. But uh in the same way we had discussed uh when I came and trained with you, is um they don't necessarily have great crushing strength, they've got good like resisting strength, like they can hang forever, but when you ask them to have to demonstrate crushing strengths, not necessarily there. But what I found interesting, I got this uh book. It was you know how you have a for dummies book? Yes. There was that series of they did it for everything, you know, like but this was like almost like that, but it was called the um I think it was called like the science and practice of training for rock climbing. But it was absolutely one of the single best breakdowns of like I got a I could get that half crimp, quarter crimp. Yeah, you know, the book's 20 years old, but it breaks down that uh this particular guy who's an innovator, he had a gymnastics background, so he started doing kind of gymnastics, front lever, hangs, single arm pull-ups, all this work to get better at rock climbing. And some of the rock climbs are like, nah, bro, that's cheating, that's not pure rock climbing, that's gym stuff. We don't do that, we just climb.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

But he had jiu-jitsu attitude, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Yeah, right. But he had a whole system around how you go from like a full crimp, like closed grip versus half crimp versus like one eighth, and then how do you build up strength in three fingers, single fingers, and had a full methodology, and I was like, holy goodness, the book is quite thick, it had all the exercises demonstrated, and it made me go, wow, grip is it's kind of more complex in a lot of ways. It is because of the complexity of the hand. Yeah, but if we were to simplify it, yeah, because we've got folks just being like, Well, I'm not fucking SNC nerds like you guys, if you could simplify it for folks, like principally, if someone's like, Oh, I'm a gi person, how what could I do? It wouldn't have to be specific exercises, but when you think about training grip for gi, what is like two or three principles or approaches you would take versus training grip for no gi. Can you uh yeah?

Wrist Strength As The Missing Link

SPEAKER_00 26:08

So, okay, so earlier when we started talking about this, I started explaining the different types of grip, closed hand support, open hand support, pinch, fingers, vertical, yes, sir, and all the all of those wrist movements. Um so basically you just take those and you identify which ones uh are gonna be more beneficial for gi and no gi. Sound bite it for me right now. So, for example, for gi, it's closed hand support. How am I gonna train that? It's gonna be dead hangs, farmers' walks, one-handed uh uh barbell rack pulls, main exercises for that. You're gonna train your finger strength. You're gonna do if you have a hangboard or something like that, you can do holds and a hangboard. If you just have a barbell or a pull-up bar, you can do fingertip dead hangs, fingertip farmer's holds, or fingertip rack pulls or deadlift holds or whatever you want to do. Um for Nogi, it's gonna be that open hand support, thick bar training. You can wrap a towel around a bar to make it thicker. You can use a fat grip to make it thicker. The other one that a lot of people don't think about you walk into any gym in the world, pretty much, there's a thick bar there, and you're going, I'm pretty sure there's not a thick bar there. And you go, Yeah, because what's on the end of your barbell? It's a two-inch handle. It rotates. You can use that to do deadlift, you can use that to do hold, you can get that attached to something where you can do pull-ups from it. Um, vertical gripping. So you can use a loading pin, or you can get a sledgehammer and you can put weight on that and you can lift it up with that, or or rope climbs, or you you put a towel over the barbell and you do pull-ups there, you're working your vertical grip. I'll tell you the one that is recently for me the the real secret, the real key. Oh, and this is I've really started to look down on this since I wrote the book, actually, which is the importance of wrist strength. I could do a whole nother half an hour just on wrist strength, but I'll try and keep it pretty snappy for you guys. Um when you whenever you grab onto something with your hand, you will have your wrist in a certain position that will optimize the strength of the hand. Which means that if your wrist moves out of that position, it will weaken the strength of the hand. So for grappling, the way that I'm gonna grapple with you is I'm going to try and force your wrist into positions where you're unable to transfer weight from the hand into the arm and from the arm into the hand. Okay, you kind of look at it as a bridge. If you're trying to drive a tank over a bridge, but that bridge is made of wood and and and and string, you've got to get out of the tank and the guys had to go on foot. But if you build that bridge out of steel and cables and it's concrete, and you can drive that tank over, that strength can go to and from the hand and the arm. So the wrist is the bridge between the two. So before I would just think of wrist, you know, the wrist training is being strong in these positions, and more recently I'm starting to realize no isometrically is actually where I want to strengthen the wrist. So I start doing these, you know, two different ways of training the wrist. But being strong at resisting extension, at resisting flexion, at resisting deviation means that when you you can actually express the strength of the hand, irrespective of the position of the wrist. If you're just doing grip sport, this doesn't matter. Because when you pick up a thick handle dumbbell off the floor, or when you pinch grip a block off the floor, or when you do a vertical bar lift off the floor, your wrist will start in the position you want it to be, and nothing's gonna move it out of it. But when you have someone who is flailing their limbs around or you know, slapping your forearm trying to break a grip, what are they actually doing? They're not trying to get the hand off, they're trying to bring your wrist into a position where your hand can't grip anymore. So that's the real secret. Wow. That's very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

That yeah, I mean strong carryover there for grip fighting, right? Yeah, massive. You you can't shift the grip, but maybe you can affect the wrist position.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Yeah, so if you want me to show you, how many people watch versus listen?

SPEAKER_02 30:03

Um, I think that we've got we've got a we've got a bunch more people who who watch, but we got vit we've got video now on Spotify too. So continue.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Okay, so you can do an example. I I do this test all the time. If you uh take take your hand and grab on, let's say let's grab onto your wrist. Just give your wrist a good squeeze. Okay. Now take that same grip in hand, release it, bend your wrist to 90 degrees, keep your wrist at 90 degrees, and try and squeeze your wrist again. Can you feel how you can't generate any forces?

SPEAKER_02 30:31

Not as strong.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

Right? Yeah, but you're you you've you've extended it a little bit. Try and flex your wrist even more. You see that? Try and squeeze there. You feel how weak it is? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

I don't ever feel weak, then I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Wrist Prep And How To Start

SPEAKER_00 30:42

So look, my wrist, I get it, I get it. With that hand. If you grab my wrist here, try and do this away. Well I'm still talking to the mic here. Zoom out, zoom out. So if you're grabbing my wrist and I try and strip my grip off of here, and I try and pawn the hand, I can't do anything. But if you bend your wrist to 90 degrees, bend your wrist here, I can just remove it. So when you're grip fighting and you do this, what it looks like you're doing is you're pulling the wrist off of the hand, but you're not. You're forcing the wrist into flex position. At that point, it's so weak that I can just remove the hand. Right. So when you understand, and and we do this when we strip the grips, but you just don't realize why. If you and this works the same when you're grip fighting from the back, when from the mount, from guard, from standing. If you're able to manipulate their wrists into weakened positions, they lose the power of the hand and therefore they lose the thing that it's connecting to. So that's true of gi and no gi in two different ways, but that wrist strength is really the secret little weapon. Nick. That's very cool.

SPEAKER_02 31:40

It's awesome. And so because this is the thing that's kind of uh just a little side note. I I wanted to really many years ago, I wanted to be able to do a planch, which is possibly the stupidest thing I could try and do, being 80% body weight in my legs. Um but a a gentleman I knew at that time, this kind of like an ex-gymnist movement guy, and he said to me, Well, you know, there's progressions to that. And he showed me this whole warm-up for the wrists, and the warm-up cooked me. Yes. I could I was like, after the warm-up, I was like, I can barely even do push-ups now. And he's like, No, no, now you're ready, your wrists are prepared. Now you start, you you know, parallel to you know, and what amazed me about that supporting position relevant to like handstands and that stuff was just how strong your wrists have to be and and flexible.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Like I struggle with that and then have good flexibility in my wrists.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

And I mean, but John stands. Joe has uh a bit of experience with the handstand. Um for you, Joe, like if we think of that as being maybe the opposite of jujitsu, there was a bit of work in like wrist prepping and and putting weight into your hands, right? For sure.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Yeah, it's a big part of it. I mean, I I definitely cooked my I cooked my wrists too diving too deep into the body weight stuff, you know, into planches and supports and shit before doing the appropriate work. What I will say too is in the movement game, the whole wrist prep thing is used as a flex.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

So it's like, hey, we're gonna do like 12 sets of fucking different wrist push-ups as a warm-up, and you're like, this isn't an effective warm-up. One or two sets is good. This is a strength workout for the wrists. After this point, you should be resting.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Yeah, it's like uh it's like the neck stuff that the wrestlers do when they're flipping around on their neck, and if you haven't been doing it since you're five years old, you can't do it, and you're like, holy shit, I'm I'm at my depth there.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

Yeah, because the the the guy I was talking to, he was trying to get me to do push-ups like like a flipper push-up, yeah, except you make a fist and you punch your fists together and you have them under your chest, and he was like, Until you can do 10 of these push-ups, you're nowhere. And I was like, Okay, I guess I'm nowhere. Like, fuck, what gonna what I I just couldn't believe it, you know. And so, as an entry point, Dan, if we can say someone's done very minimal grip training, you know, they've done some basic GIM stuff. You know, obviously, you've explained those principal ideas. Could you give one or two recommendations as a gateway drug? Because obviously you are the Tony Montana of grip.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

You've got we want them to start buying your product, but you know, they need a taste first.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Yeah, give them a taste. Look, my Instagram's full of tasters, right? So look your your your your your Instagram is uh a wet dream of grip, right? It's full of I've started doing this little series on there. If you go down a little bit, you'll see uh called Grip Education, where basically I'm explaining all the different types of grip in uh carousel posts. Sure. Um, there are a few in a row, and now I'm away. I'm gonna do them a little bit more sporadically. Uh, but I will still be doing them. That is again, I said it before when we first started this episode. Um, it's all about the framework of understanding the different types of grip. You need to understand that. If you want to learn that for free, go onto the Instagram and start following along there. If you want to learn that um in a video format, I have a grip strength masterclass that you can get Ape Academy Online. And I also have the book, which is really the book was distilling all of that information onto paper. So if people really wanted to dive deep on that, they'd be able to. But if you want it for free, then it's on it's that those little grip education posts are on the Instagram.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

Very good. Boom, boom. Check it out. We'll get it all linked up, and you can find out more to go check out how to get strong, like the Route 38.