Grip strength
A cheap squeeze on a dynamometer predicts mortality and disability better than almost any other single measurement. It is a proxy, not a target.
goodWell supported, with the usual caveats about effect size.Revised 03 Jul 2026
The measurement is trivial to take. What it stands in for is not.Photograph: Brittany Colette / Unsplash
Definition
The maximal force of a handgrip, measured with a hand dynamometer in kilograms or newtons. The European consensus on sarcopenia (EWGSOP2) uses low grip strength as the primary indicator of probable sarcopenia, ahead of muscle mass — a deliberate change from the earlier definition.
Why a hand test predicts so much
It should not work as well as it does. Grip strength correlates with all-cause mortality, cardiovascular events, hospital length of stay, recovery after surgery and future disability, across populations and after adjustment for the obvious confounders.
The reason is that it is not really measuring your hand. It is a cheap readout of total muscle mass and quality, of neuromuscular function, and of general physiological reserve — the things that are hard to measure and expensive to image. A weak grip in an older adult is usually a weak person.
What it does not mean
Training your grip does not move the underlying risk. This is the most common misreading. Squeezing a hand gripper daily will raise your dynamometer number without changing the reserve the number was standing in for.
The same trap exists for walking speed, chair-stand time and every other functional proxy: they are useful because they summarise something, and they stop being useful the moment they are trained directly.
Grip strength is a thermometer. Warming the thermometer does not warm the room.
What actually moves it
Whole-body resistance training, adequate protein, and treating whatever else is draining reserve. Deadlifts, carries, rows and pull-downs raise grip as a by-product, and raise the thing grip was measuring at the same time.
Using it
As a tracked number over years, not as a score to beat. Cut-points vary by population and by dynamometer, and EWGSOP2’s thresholds are diagnostic criteria rather than fitness goals. For a healthy adult the useful version is the trend: a grip that is falling year on year in your fifties is worth mentioning to a doctor; a grip two kilos below a table you found online is not.