Get a Grip

I can’t always pinpoint what triggers an interest in something but if it’s related to health and makes a lot of sense then there’s a decent chance I will apply it somehow, someway in my routine. Cold showers, smoothies, blue zones, ice on my face in the mornings, working with a trainer consistently, and tennis are all habits that have been additive in terms of building up my productive capacity and enjoyment of life.

My most recent interest seems a bit odd at first but is actually quite powerful and impactful: grip strength. It turns out that grip strength is correlated with longevity, heart health, and cognition. More importantly, the lack of it is associated with poor outcomes for these categories.

I will present some of the findings but before I do, a little while back one of the exercises incorporated into my training was hanging from a chin up bar. The goal was to get me to do it for 60 seconds. The first time I couldn’t get past 10 seconds and that was even a challenge. I was not happy about this but you have to start somewhere so I used it as motivation to improve. I went on line and did some research and ended up ordering a grip strength trainer and a device to measure my grip strength. 

Grip Strength

Here is the grip strength trainer that I use and I keep near me while working. When needing a little boost of energy or physical challenge I’ll pick it up and squeeze it 10 times with each hand.

After working with this for just a short period of time, I eventually got to 65 seconds on the chin up bar and significantly improved my measured grip strength. I was quite pleased by the rapid and significant improvement, especially given how important grip strength is for one’s health.

Here are tables showing what healthy and less healthy grip strength values are by age for males and females.

I’m 60 and when I first tested myself I was unequivocally in the Lowest category. That was pretty eye opening, although not shocking given how poor my chin up time was. Fortunately, after doing a minimal amount of training, I was able to improve my measurements materially such that both my right and left hand are now in the Good category as these pictures show. There is definitely a gap between my right hand (stronger) and left hand (weaker). We shall see if I can close this gap and then if I can get into the Top 25% with more focus and consistency.

After I decided to write about grip strength I saw this pop up on my X feed from Bryan Johnson who is fanatically obsessed with longevity. He supposedly spends over $2 million per year on his health to reverse the aging process.

That last line is quite jarring in that strength losses are irreversible. If this isn’t a wake up call to be constantly working on strength, including grip strength, I don’t know what is. In this case you can’t get back what you let slip away so it’s best to keep working on our strength.

At CWS we use Microsoft Copilot as our A.I. tool. It has a research function so I wanted to know if a report could be generated which covered studies relating grip strength to positive health outcomes and longevity. It took a bit to generate but what it produced was really impressive. It had the added benefit of saving me a tremendous amount of time by not needing to research the subject.

Rather than excerpt a lot of the report, I thought I would share summaries showing how important grip strength is, or in the world of Charlie Munger’s inversion process, the devastating impact of weak grip strength. Munger famously said if you want to live a great life first identify what makes a bad life and avoid doing those things. It’s clear that avoiding weak grip strength is something I need to avoid which means I should focus on maintaining and improving it.

If I have one piece of advice for this week it’s to get a grip. Get in the game of working on your grip strength. There is very little downside, other than physical exertion, and the potential exists for enormous upside. Those are the types of asymmetrical outcomes that we should all heavily invest in. We can feel better, derive great satisfaction from doing something that is so beneficial, and improve our chances of living a longer, more vibrant life.

I’ll leave you with this.