Heavy grip FAQ's

Frequently asked questions about the Heavy Grip hand grippers

• Who should use the Heavy Grips™?

  The Heavy Grips™ hand-grippers are a very effective training tool for any consumer or athlete, men or women, who would like to substantially increase the strength of their wrists, fingers and hands. If you’re willing to work hard and don’t mind a few calluses on your fingers due to the knurled grip, then the Heavy Grips are probably for you. Side effects should include huge vascular fore-arms as pictured above from an actual Heavy Grips customer!!

• Who should NOT use the Heavy Grips™?

  Whiners, slackers or anyone that is likely to complain that their hands “are sore” after using our product for low-rep strength training. Our aluminum-handled grippers are knurled to provide a good grip for sweaty hands which is beneficial when training with the tougher levels; so they don’t slip. Your fingers will get used to the grippers. Just like any other type of strength-training workouts, your hands will most likely get sore as you get used to training with the grippers. If you’re worried about getting sore hands, don’t buy our grippers!

• Are the HeavyGrips similar in strength to other grippers on the market?

  No they are not. We actually measure our gripper resistance as a conversion of “twisting-force” and if you are expecting our resistance-levels to be the same as any other heavy-duty gripper on the market with a ‘strength estimate’, then you may be disappointed and we advise you to stick with your favorite brand to avoid any costly confusion for you or us. We are providing an affordable strength tool for any athlete or consumer that can benefit from increasing their hand-strength with our quality product at an affordable price.

• Which gripper should I start with?

  Click here for more information on Heavy Grip Strength
  The HeavyGrip(HG)100 is mostly used as a warm-up gripper or for grip beginners. We recommend this gripper for females, young athletes and people with an ‘average grip’ and no grip training experience. It is also a very high quality gripper for stronger people who like to do a lot of repetitions. That’s why it’s called “The Beginner”.

  Most strong people can do reps with the HG 150-“Intermediate” and find that the grips become really difficult at the HG 200 level and people of average hand strength have trouble closing the HG 200 for reps or the HG250 once. When training their hand like other body-parts with reps under 20, most athletes, including women, are surprised at how fast they can master the HG 200 and HG250 and some athletes do reps with the HG 300 and HG 350. Click here for more strength info.

• How do you determine the strength of the Heavy Grips?

  Although we have developed a standardized testing procedure, as our Disclaimer says: “the strengths are approximate” and we are selling athletic training equipment, not calibrated instruments. The Heavy-Grips are tested in the middle of the gripper and we test the ‘Twist-torque’ measured in Newton.metres(N.m) and convert to inch-force-pounds, shortened to “lbs” for marketing purposes for our largest market, the USA. We’ve had a few consumers try measuring the strength of our grippers with bathroom scales and other innovative methods, but unless you spend thousands of dollars producing similar standardized testing equipment you will not get the same torque results.

  Although the piano wire springs are wound with a CNC machine, it is virtually impossible to make every spring exactly uniform in strength, but we do our best to ensure that the grippers are as uniform as possible. Each gripper is tested by the manufacturer before being packaged to ensure that the springs meet minimum torque requirements. The devices that the quality-control inspectors are using(right) are torque testing device measuring minimum amount of ‘twisting force’ needed to close each gripper. We also use spot testing with other calibrated torque-testing equipment.

  Please note that due to the extreme force required to wind the springs in addition to the tests in the testing machines(right) and the mechanical blister-packaging, the springs may end up slightly scuffed up, but this will not affect the use of your gripper!

• How often should I train with my Heavy Grips™?

  We only recommend training with the Heavy Grips two to three times per week. Unlike the dept. store brand of grippers you can do endless reps with, our grippers were designed to give you a solid resistance work-out by doing low repetitions.(squeezing the grippers less than 5 to 15 times for work sets). Many new consumers make the mistake of over-training and use their Heavygrips everyday which can cause injury due to overtraining. Just as you would not bench press or squat heavy weights 4 or 5 times per week, you should not train low reps with your Heavygrips that often.

• How come you sell your grippers by the single gripper instead of pairs?

  When exercising with the Heavy Grips™ Hand Grippers, the training format is similar to that of training the biceps with concentration curls. Our grippers are very tough and are designed for much lower strength and power gaining reps than the average store-bought gripper. We’d be surprised (and very impressed) if you picked up a pair of the Heavy Grip 200’s and rattled off a bunch of reps with both hands at the same time.

• One of my Heavy Grips™ is a little narrower and weaker than when I purchased it. Is this covered by warranty?

  The Heavy Grips™ are designed for athletes to use as a tool to strengthen their grips and by nature the torsion springs will get weaker the more they are used and may become narrower over time. Our engineers have found that this happens more often when the grippers are being “seasoned” (broke in using various methods that we don’t recommend) by holding the grippers closed or forced shut with two hands and held closed. To minimize the narrowing of the springs, ensure that you are not holding your gripper shut with two hands or another device. The grippers are meant to be used with one hand doing normal repetitions to achieve better hand strength for various sports.

  The grippers will have slight variations in ‘handle stance’ from the factory in order to get the required strength for each gripper. Depending on the gripper model, the springs are typically 6.0 to 7.25cm (2.25″ to 2.75 inch) from the bottom of each handle when brand new. Even if the stance at the bottom of the handles narrows to 5.5cm or 2 inches, it will still allow an effective work-out. We are told that our ‘gripper stance’ is narrower than others on the market, but our grippers have a stance that will allow even users with small hands to have a great hand workout.

  If the stance becomes lower than 5.5cm or 2 inches due to a manufacturer’s defect, we will replace that gripper through our Lifetime Warranty.

• Can I exchange my gripper for a stronger or weaker grip?

  “The HG150 was not as tough as I had thought” or “I’ll never be able to close the Heavygrip 300”.

  We have a two-week no-hassle return policy which is supposed to be for those that aren’t happy with their grippers for whatever reason. They can return their gripper and we can resell it after refunding the purchase (minus shipping). We ask that anyone who wants to exchange their gripper for a different gripper send a check for $6 to cover restocking, fulfillment and shipping charges. It is not our fault if you choose the wrong hand gripper and it costs $6 to replace it with another gripper. Click here for more details.

• I just bought a couple of your Heavy Grips™ and have blisters on my fingers from the tread on the handles. Why are they so rough?

  Good question. The gripper handles had to be made of metal as plastic handles just could not handle the torque from the larger springs and would be too slippery. Our grippers are made of cast aluminum machine-knurled handles and without the knurling they would be very slippery, especially if your hand gets sweaty. We have worked with the manufacturer to ensure that the knurling isn’t very sharp and the aluminum makes it slightly softer. Our newer grippers have a non-slip annodized coating on the handles which helps make the knurl more comfortable.

  If you are getting blisters on your fingers than you are definitely over-training with your handgrippers. Cut back on your training to a couple days a week and you will find that you will slowly develop small calluses on your fingers and won’t notice the knurling after a couple of weeks.

• How should I train with the Heavy Grips™?

  New: Check out the Heavy Grips training manual by Clay Edgin!! Click here!

  Our hand grippers were designed for developing incredible hand strength. To do this, you must train your hand similar to any other body part and use low reps(and only 2 to 3 times per week) You will not develop a super strong grip by doing a lot of repetitions. Like any other bodypart, don’t forget to warm-up and stretch your hand.

  Keep the reps in the range of 5 to 25. If you are able to do 15 to 25 reps with a particular strength of gripper, it is a good time to move up to the next level of gripper. Even if you aren’t able to close the next level you can do partials, forced reps and assisted negatives until you are fully able to close it. The average person has trouble being able to close the HG200 on the first try and many report after a couple of months of training they are easily closing it for reps.

  When you are able to close your lighter grippers for more than 25 reps, you can use them for warm-ups and for “super-sets”. An example of a “super-set” would be to use the HG250 for 2 reps, then the HG200 for 8 reps, then the HG150 until failure, then the HG100 to failure.

  Spring Breaks: Shipping damage or dropping the gripper greatly increases the chance of spring breakage. The shiny black coating makes it easy to spot any defects or damage. If your spring has even a small chip out of the metal, do not use as it will most likely break. If you inspect your grippers upon arrival and take good care of them, you should not have any issues.