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by thomascgalvin 1352 days ago
> Grip strength is a leading indicator of whether or not an elderly person will recover from a fall.

I suspect that this is one of those things where the correlation falls apart as soon as you start training explicitly for it.

Many clinicians use grip strength can be used as a proxy for overall strength[1], but the actual correlation is often moderate, at best[2]. Grip strength is just much easier to measure than, say, someone's max deadlift, so some inaccuracy is allowed.

But _only_ training grip shouldn't have much effect on hip fractures. You can use one of those squeeze handles all day, every day, and not improve your overall survivability. Likewise, squats would have little effect on your grip strength, but should correlate highly to surviving a fall.

All of which is to say, ignore all the stories about how grip strength, or the sitting-rising test[3], or any other "trick" that is supposed to correlate on long life, and focus instead on being overall strong and limber. For most people, yoga is probably sufficient. Adding in some basic weight lifting would be excellent, too, for most people.

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6778477/

[2]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29935982/

[3]: https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/health/take-th...

1 comments

Odd bit to fixate on. Hopefully no one reads my original comment and assumes they should only focus on grip strength. I thought that would have been obvious, but thanks for the extra info
I wasn't trying to argue with you, or point out any flaws in your post; just adding some context.