How to strengthen *very gently* your grip in order to safely perform chin-ups? Are wrist wraps good?

Question

I have recently started trying to do negative chin-ups in several occasions, but afterwards I feel a mild pain in both my left and right wrists. It is not the kind of "healthy" discomfort of sore muscles, but rather the kind of thing that, when ignored, eventually sets up as a tendonitis.

After a day or two it goes away, then I try again, and it comes back.

This means, not only I have to do negatives in order to gain strength to eventually perform chin-ups, but rather I have to strengthen my wrists first, in order to be able to do negatives...

So, I have two questions:

1) What exercises can I do to gradually and gently gain strength in my wrists?

2) Will the bodybuilding writs wraps help by pulling too? Why and how? Should I wear them always when attempting dumbbell lifting and calisthenics, or would that protect my wrists but also prevent them from becoming stronger?

I have seen this wonderful video of a man performing several chin-ups at age 89, so I am not going to give up (I am 41).

Remark: by wrist straps I mean something like that:

which (I think but it is only a guess) act by relieving some tension from the transverse carpal ligament during heavy lifting. Nothing to do with the straps used to assist the grip in heavy deadlifts.

Answer 1

The cheapest piece of exercise equipment for grip strength is one of those binder clips:

They come in difference sizes, so start small and work your way up. Pinch it open between your pinky and your thumb. This tip comes from Mr. Ed Coan himself. When your grip breaks, it's always the pinky side first. If you get that side stronger the grip will be harder to break.

Next in the grip builders is to pinch grip a dumbbell by the fat part and increase time. When you get to 30s grip you can get a heavier dumbbell. This allows you to build up the grip with what you can handle right now.

Assess your Set Up

Something I recommend you do is to assess your setup on the pull-up bar. It could be that your hands are too close together or too far apart and your wrists are bending at an unnatural angle. When you add weight to that it stresses the ligaments and tendons rather than strengthening the surrounding muscle.

It also might be that you need to focus on neutral grip pull-ups for the time being until your grip naturally gets stronger from the pull-ups.

Answer 2

I would suggest doing an exercise that will work your grip and another muscle group at the same time, like dead-lifts, shrugs, farmer's walk, etc. Probably the easiest of the ones mentioned would be shrugs and easy to progress since you can incrementally add weight after every week or so.

I don't like using straps or gloves or anything that will artificially improve my grip or hold. You are your weakest at your weakest link (grip most of the time) so it makes sense to strengthen it, not enhance it artificially.

Answer 3

More than a year has passed. This is what eventually worked for me: isometric exercises with tennis balls. I built up slowly each third day, from two to four sets of five to ten "reps", where a "rep" here means five seconds squeezing hard a tennis ball in each hand.

I recommend that approach to anyone in the same situation as me. Maybe it worked well because isometric exercises for grip training resemble much better how your grip is meant to work in real life: you hang from a bar or pick up a dumbbell by squeezing it hard, but the radius of the object remains constant all along the exercise - the same goes for a stone you pick up in your hand or a tree branch our ancestors hanged from. The same cannot be stated about other muscles, of course.

Answer 4

You are currently placing a pulling load on a muscle system and seeing which part of the system fails first. It's easy to forget that strength training involves more than training just the muscle. It also involves load on the tendons, ligaments, and bones. Since you are experiencing what feels like inflammation of the tendons, it seems logical that the tendon is the weakest link.

Eccentric contractions are much more taxing on the system, especially when performed with more resistance than can be moved concentrically. You should train the full range of motion (concentric and eccentric) to be sure that your muscles aren't applying more load than the tendons can handle. Do deadlifts, assisted chins, cable pulldowns, rows, shrugs in a 5x5 rep scheme, and you'll strengthen at a rate your body can handle.

Answer 5

I used to have problems with my grip half a year ago, so i started to train my forearms to increase my strength in my grip.

Some excercises i added on my arm day to increase my grip strength -

seated-palms-down-barbell-wrist-curl 4 sets of 25

reverse-barbell-curl 3 sets of 15

I use gloves to get a better grip so the weights don't slide off. I consider the gloves to be very good for pull-ups.

Gloves i use :

Answer 6

What works for me is a slower and more cautious progression.

Coming back from a shoulder injury, I started with three sets of five dips. I could have done many more, but I took it super slow. The next workouts looked like this:

• Three sets of five again
• Three sets of six
• Three sets of six
• Four sets of six, since I wanted more volume but felt that my form started to deteriorate ever so slightly towards the end of a set
• Four sets of six
• ...and so on until I was doing three twenty-rep sets plus weighted dips

I think this approach works well for coming back from an injury and taking it easy on potential injuries. For what it's worth, I've also found pull-up negatives to be helpful with elbow tendon inflammation.

Answer 7

To strengthen your grip for pull-ups, I'd keep it simple. Hang from a bar for as long as you can or a minute, whichever comes first. Repeat for up to 4 sets. This will improve your pull-ups no end.

As for your wrist, take it easy and if it gets worse go see a specialist. I've trained a number of people who have had wrist pain when they first start calisthenics, make sure you do some wrist circles before you start to warm-up. Usually it clears up after a few weeks once they start to adapt to the exercises, but as I say if not then drop it back and go see a specialist.

For more help on getting your first pull-up, check out my tutorial