Hand Grip Strength - One of the Best Indicators of Health-Related Quality of Life in Old Age

Over the past year, I've noticed an increasing stream of studies that point to hand grip strength as a strong indicator of health-related quality of life in old age. This aligns with mounting evidence that one of the best things we can do to preserve our health as we age is to develop and maintain muscle tissue and the physical strength that it affords.

With hand grip strength in mind, I recorded a simple routine of the most important exercises that virtually everyone can do to improve and maintain grip strength. Though titled "Eliminate Tennis Elbow," at the heart of the video above are simple ways of improving grip strength at any age.

While squeezing a tennis ball or a grip strengthening tool is valuable and recommended, I feel that the single best exercise for grip strength is full extension of the fingers and thumb - this is the last exercise in the 4-minute video linked above.

The primary reason is this: the most common activities of daily living involve squeezing objects in our hands, so the vast majority of us have under-developed forearm extensors. This is why tennis elbow is far more common than golfer's elbow, as tennis elbow involves a breakdown of the tendons of our forearm extensors.

A significant determinant of grip strength is the health of our forearm extensor muscle tendons at our elbow and also at our wrist - where these tendons are not well conditioned, they are more prone to micro-tears and signalling pain whenever we squeeze objects like a hammer or a tight jar lid.

If you have any questions about this, please use the comments section under this video at our YouTube channel:

https://youtu.be/nR6-IdHH00k

All you need to ask questions and interact with our readership at YouTube is a google account, which is free. While there, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel, as I'm leaning toward shifting all of our Q&A to the comments section of YouTube so that we can build a living archive of information and experiences that can be helpful to everyone.

Please consider sharing this video with family and friends, as working on hand grip strength is something that everyone can do at any age and in any location.