The Current - Why grip strength matters more than you think

Episode Date: January 9, 2026

Grip strength might seem like a small thing,  but researchers say it can reveal a lot about how we age. Health and fitness journalist Alyssa Ages explains why grip strength is linked to longevity, what it actually reflects about the body, and how to maintain strength in realistic, everyday ways.

This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on a Viking longship, with thoughtful service, destination-focused dining, and cultural enrichment, on board, and on shore. With a variety of voyages and sailing dates to choose from, now is the time to explore Europe's waterways. Learn more at viking.com. ABC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. What is your grip like, not your handshake, but your ability to hang on and hold on to your own weight, maybe, maybe just

carry groceries. Seems like a strange question to ask somebody on a Friday, but grip, and it's important, are all the rage. I want to be able to strut into older age, feeling confident in my body's ability. And what is going to be a good marker of that? Grip strength. So, start lifting heavy things, start hanging from stuff, just start including it. It strengthens the fingers, the arm, and the cortex. It's called humunculus. So grip strength not only drives the brain, but it strengthens the grip. You take people with the highest grip strength compared to the lowest grip strength, the people with the highest grip strength have a 70% lower chance of getting and dying from dementia. Goodness, high stakes there.

on this gripping story. Never mind. Sorry about that. I'm joined by Alyssa Aches. She is a health and fitness journalist, the author of Secrets of Giants, a journey to uncover the true meaning of strength. Alyssa, good morning. Good morning. Nice to see you again. Nice to see you. What are we talking about here? What is grip strength? So grip strength is basically your ability to hold on to something, whether it is with a pinch grip, like with your fingertips or kind of with the palm of your hand, like when you're giving a handshake. And it is an important marker for longevity, but I think not quite in the way that a lot of the headlines want you to think it is.

Because it's not just about your grip. It's about your overall strength. And I think people who have a stronger grip tend to be stronger overall. And that's kind of an important part to note about it because we don't want people to think, oh my God, I don't have great grip strength. I'm just going to die. This is a thing now, right? And one of the reasons why we wanted to talk to, there are stories that are written about it.

but my Instagram algorithm is very strange. It seems to be like salads and people making bread and stories about grip strength. Why is this now a thing? I think we talk so much about longevity now. And I think, you know, everybody has forever wants to define what is that one magic thing that is going to make me live forever. And if someone is going to tell you, it's grip strength. And it feels like something you can just add and train easily, then you're going to kind of glom onto it. But the truth is you don't need to sit on your couch just sort of grabbing one of those old school bodybuilding grippers.

A lot of the things- Like those pinch kind of things. Yeah. We don't have to do that, right? So a lot of the ways that we train, as long as you are doing strength training and resistance training, are going to increase your grip strength regardless, while you are also doing the more important thing and the known marker of longevity, which is building your muscle mass. What have you brought into the studio? These sitting next to me here. I have brought in two little five-pound plates. Okay.

And I thought one of the things we could do is we can have you try to pinch them together just with your fingertips and see how long you can hold on to that for and how that feels together. So I just pinch, can I do this with either hand? Yeah, but you can't put your fingers in the hole in the middle. You've got to pinch them from the top. Pinch from the top. Yeah. Yeah. So like turn them sideways.

Why don't you come over here? You come here and show me what I have to do it this way. I have to turn it this way. So turning it sideways. So these weights are now standing up. They're going to plate weights and I'm going to pick them up. And I'm going to your pinch. Like that?

Yeah. Okay? Yeah. And you're going to tell me how... And you feel right away, it's going to start slipping. Sure, it is. Yeah, I'm worried that it's going to come crashing down onto the table. How long do I need to do this for?

Well, there isn't really a specific marker of how long it has to be in your hands for, but it's just kind of a good sense of, is this challenging for me? I'm still doing it and it's challenging. Is this something? Yeah, it's challenging. Can I put them down now? Thank you very much. Now, in doing that, what does that show me?

It's just sort of showing you. I mean, with that one, it's fingertip strength, right? And just can you hang on to that? it's the strength in your fingertips, but it also is the strength in the rest of your hands and your forearm, and it actually goes all the way up your arm. I want to, I mean, one of the studies I kind of want to point to because I think this is the one that gets referenced the most is this 2015 study, I believe, in the Lancet. And they had studied, they followed 140,000 people between the ages of 35 and 70. And they measured their grip strength using one of those, again, those kind of squeasy things, which is the technical term for it.

And then they followed them over the next four years. And they continued to test their grip strength. And they found that with every 11 pound decrease in grip strength over the course of that time, there was a 17% increase in the risk of cardiovascular death. What do we know about that? Well, so this is the thing because then people spoke to the author about it. And the author sort of said, well, we don't know that it's that grip strength is necessarily this marker of you're going to have better cardiovascular strength. But what we do know is that exercise in general is really important.

And we know that we want you to be exercising most days and doing resistance training most days. So I think the big thing is I don't want people to feel like you have to now spend an extra 20 minutes of your day, just training your grip, or you will have heart disease. You know, that's not the takeaway from it. People have pointed to, and we could talk more about how you go about strengthening your grip. But people have talked about what this will allow you to. to do later on in life, that you are able to open tightly closed jars later in life. You're able to carry a bag of groceries. You're able to maybe pick up a grandchild or what have you. Tell me about some of the things that grip strength can allow you beyond the concerns around dementia.

That grip strength will allow you to do in future if you strengthen it, if you work on it. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I feel like I write about so much I'm a broken record, which is if you want to be able to continue to live independently for longer, you have to build strength. You have to get stronger. You have to be able to do more things like carrying your groceries. That's grip strength, right? So let's say you need to carry your bags of groceries from, even if it's just your driveway to your front door, but maybe you're in a condo building and it's from your parking lot up to the elevator, whatever it is. That's grip strength. Grips strength is opening up the pickle jar. You know, it's those simple things. It's something like just

giving a handshake to somebody, which if you're in business, that's a really important thing to be able to do. But, you know, again, it's something that you can develop by doing other strength training exercises that will similarly help you continue to live an independent life to build your stability and your control and your mobility and all of those other important things. So deadlifting, not necessarily a giant barbell. I know what people are picturing. You can deadlift two dumbbells. Anything with free weights where those weights are only being held by the strength of your hands, that's going to build your grip strength. If you have access to a pull-up bar, hanging from it and doing just a dead hang, where you literally just let your body hang for as long as you can,

that's going to build your grip strength. But that's also going to build your upper body strength, which is just as important. So how are that, I mean, you've hinted at some of them. How are some of the ways that we can go about training ourselves to do this? Yeah, I would say if you are strength. Especially if you're not going to a gym, for example. Yes. If you are strength training, which I hope people are doing, and you can even just get a set of dumbbells at home, do exercises with those dumbbells. I mean, these are five pounds. Yeah. And I don't know how long I held on to them before, but you could feel it in my arm. Yeah, exactly. And if you held on for longer, you'd start to feel it further up your arm as well, right? But anything where you're holding onto a

weight where there's gravity pulling on it, that's going to increase your grip strength. So think about things like lunges with weights in your hand. Think about things like those deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, anything where you have to hold onto that with your own power. So a cable machine is nice too, but if you're talking about doing it at home, even a household object, grab a gallon jug of water and do that. Walk around with that a little bit more. So people have talked about this. You should be able to lift it up. But also, if you can, walk around with something like that. See how long you could, could you walk for a minute carrying those? Is that what we should be thinking about? Yes. A farmer carry is actually a phenomenal movement to do. That's what it's called

the farmer carry. A weighted carry is one of the kind of fundamental ways we move through our day. There's a series of these fundamental movement patterns that are the way that we kind of do all the daily tasks in our life. And a carry is one of them, a weighted carry. So yeah, pick up two heavy things. They don't have to be equal weight because how often are you carrying two things of exactly equal weight in your hands while you walk around? Your grocery bags are not the exact same weight. And walk around with them. Walk back and forth down your hallway in your house. And just do that, you know, if you incorporate that twice a week into your strength training routine, that's a really simple way to do it. And there are muscle benefits to this, but brain benefits as well.

Yes, yes. We do understand that there are cognitive benefits associated with grip strength, but there are also cognitive benefits associated with just being stronger in general. And that's what broadly what you're talking about here. This is part of, and again, there's this huge focus. And I mentioned it's the beginning of January. The gyms are filled with people. People want to pump up. But they also need to get strong.

And there's a real focus now on people doing strength training over the course of your life. Yes, exactly. One, it's never too late to start. It does not matter how old you are. We don't really know if there is a point at which you are going to stop being able to build muscle. we don't think that there is. But, you know, if you have somebody who even is experiencing bone loss related to age, you can still maintain the bone that you have by continuing to strength train.

You can build the muscle that you have. You can build back muscle by strength training. And it doesn't have to be some crazy thing that you've seen on the internet. It's just what's hard for you? The most important thing for growing muscle and for building bone is that you are just stressing your muscles enough for it to be challenging so that you are forcing them to grow. Two off-remps that people will find to not do this. One is, I simply don't have time. I couldn't possibly. I'm not going to go to the gym. I don't have time. Everything's too busy. What would you say?

I would say if you can carve out even 20 minutes of your day to do it at home, again, with household items, that is still a really, really good start. Or just with your body weight is a really good start. A resistance band is a really good start. You can get up for five minutes from your desk and do it in little chunks throughout the day. We know that exercise snacks, as they call them, are also really beneficial. So you can just find little ways to work it in. And the other part is, and you've hinted at this, but people will say, well, it's too late for me to do this. I haven't been doing it. Why do it now? Yes. And that we know, we know with certainty it is not too late. That there's never, it's never too late. It's never too late. I would say if you are on the slightly older side,

I mean, in general, I think everybody benefits from working with a trainer at the start of their strength training career, but especially if you're a little bit older and maybe your stability is a little bit off at this point, having somebody who can be with you and watch you and make sure you're moving correctly and with the right form and safely is really, really important. So even if you do that for two or three sessions just to learn how to move, it is a really good way to start. Are you encouraged by, I said that this is a thing now and it's not just on social media, but a lot of people are talking about this. As somebody who has spent a lot of time talking about this and writing about it, you encouraged by that? Yes, I think it's.

It's amazing. I mean, my parents, I was just visiting with my parents in Florida and they said, you know, we need to start strength training. What do we do? And I took them to their little gym that has a rack of dumbbells and some cable machines. And I gave them two workouts to do twice a week that are based on your fundamental movement patterns. So we did a hinge, a lunge, a squat, a push, a pull, and a rotation. And I just gave them that. And I was like, this is how basic it is. You just have to do every one of those movement patterns, both times that you. you go into the gym, and that's a really good start. Alyssa, thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thanks for bringing the weights, too. I feel like I got stronger here just in the studio. Absolutely. Alyssa Ages is a health and fitness journalist

and author of a great book called Secrets of Giants, a journey to uncover the true meaning of strength. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30am at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.c.com. slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.