Originally Posted by
Cecil Burch
Be extremely careful with doing supplemental work like that. If you already have a heavy BJJ workload, plus the rest of your life that you deal with, adding heavy grip work can lead to problems. We are already working our grips so much in BJJ constantly, that then we do outside grip work, our hands never have time to recuperate.
I was a fanatic abotu grip strength and I was doing a lot of it. I had the Ironmind grippers in my car so I could do reps while driving. I had worked up to closing the #2 Captains of Crush and was soooooo close to closing the #3, until suddenly I started losing strength and I was at the point the #1 was tough. And my hands just HURT. Badly, 24/7. Forget about BJJ grips - it was almost non-existent. I dropped all the supplemental grip stuff, added a bunch of rehab work, and focused on working the grip within the confines of regular class training. In a couple of months, the pain stopped and my strength level got back to a decent level. Since then I get all my grip work in class, or in normal weight work (heavy deadlifts, cleans, snatches, etc).