Whether you are a beginner in BJJ or an advanced grappler, you probably want more grip strength. Among the many physical attributes necessary to be successful in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and grappling, grip strength is among the most essential.
We have all encountered that training partner with vice-like grips, which can always be frustrating. Strong grips can help you force some techniques and give you an edge on the mat whether you are training gi or no-gi. Of all the exercises you can do to improve your grip strength, one is above every other: rope climbing!
In this video, the great BJJ/MMA coach John Danaher explains why rope climbing is the single best exercise for developing grappling grip strength:
“Please understand, guys, whenever I coach gripping, the first question I get from everyone is, ‘How can I make my grip stronger?’ And what they mean by that is, you know, how can I make my forearm stronger, my wrist stronger—they think I’m going to get into some crazy exercise like, you know, squeezing tennis balls and all this kind of madness.
Please understand that the effective strength of your grip has much more to do with skill in gripping than it does with physical strength. The only exercise that I advocate for developing physical strength in your grip is rope climbing. That’s the only exercise I’ve seen over the years which does have tangible benefits for grappling. Everyone I know who invested considerable time in rope climbing had a good firm grip.
Once you go beyond that, I don’t really see any great benefit to going further. If you can climb rope up and down four or five times without the use of your legs, your grip is plenty strong enough—you don’t need anything more than that. It’s after that you get diminishing returns on continued investment into grip strength.
Just focus on rope climbing. Get confident that you should be able to pull yourself up a rope without the use of your legs. If you can do this, that’s more than enough. After that, as I said, diminishing returns. Spending vast amounts of time on crazy esoteric machines to develop your grip strength is not going to help you that much. It’s much more about skill.”
How to Climb a Rope?
There are two ways to climb a rope: with or without using your legs. Using your legs can help you a lot, but it will not put enough stress on your back and hands. This method is used in CrossFit, and the goal is to get as many reps as possible. If you are climbing the rope to improve your grip strength, you should do it only with your hands.
The best way is to sit on the ground and do it from a seated position. As you progress up the rope, you should use small movements and avoid overextending your arms, which can lead to injuries. Once you are at the top of the rope, descend slowly! Don’t just let go and fall to the ground. Descend the same way you got up; once you are down, you can repeat the exercise. As you become more familiar with this exercise, you can add weight to make it more challenging. Here is a video demonstrating a rope climb.
Sloth Jiu-Jitsu: you can be slow and unathletic and still kick butt in Jiu-Jitsu.
