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THE GUITAR PLAYERS COMMUNITY

Gripmaster Exercise Tool

The Gripmaster tool is often see under the accessory pages of many guitar magazines and websites. Funnily enough - the product website doesn’t even mention guitars! This is aimed at getting more strength into your fingers to help fret notes and to build endurance in your fingers, wrist, and arms.

The Gripmaster tool comes in 4 strengths. I personally use the red, medium resistance (7lbs per finger).

This is something to keep in your bag and around the house to just work at whilst you have some free time. You can also make up more of a training routine and work on sets of exercises for your fingers. The Gripmaster seems like a pretty simple tool to just grasp and squeeze, but a quick look at the manual that comes with it - or even better - the website - and you will see that it can be used to work other muscles groups other then just the fingertips.

Exercises

Hookgrasp	Fingertip Pinch	Flatfist	Fingerplay	Powergrip	Wristflex
Tripod Pinch	Thumbpinch	Triggergrip	Powerpinch	Tricep Press

These exercises are meant to be a supplement to your normal guitar playing, so don’t sit pumping this thing all day and expect to play like a pro. It’s just to help build up strength and endurance to help play better. I found it useful to work on my little finger, as this is often a weak point for most players.

This is an excerpt from the Gripmaster homepage:

"The exercises provided are not tailored to any specific sport. They are designed to enhance and maintain the physical attributes and general health of athletic hands regardless of sport.

Begin all exercises slowly and use low resistance & few repetitions. Hold each position 3-5 seconds and relax - repeat 5 to 10 times. Little by little increase to 3 sets of 10 (30 reps). When graduating to a higher resistance begin again with 5 to 10 reps and build slowly.

If you experience pain or fatigue – stop immediately. As with any exercise, excessive or incorrect use can lead to pain or injury. Therefore progress slowly and increase reps and resistance very cautiously."

What’s it like

So, how did I get on with it? I found it to be such a simple to to get into using. After you memorise of a few of the exercises tailored towards the guitar playing - mainly theHookgrasp,Fingertip Pinch,Fingerplay and theTripod Pinch, then it’s easy. Just keep it in your pocket and try and work up in sensible steps. This is probably best for the players just getting started as in experienced players - the key muscle groups will already be developed. Nothing to stop you from using a greater resistance - but just don’t go and overwork the tendons as you can do more damage than good.

For the few quid you will have to spend on it (about £12) - it’s worth picking one up and giving it a go.

Where To Buy

Get one from the US page here: http://s41357.sites59.storefront-hosting.com/gm_storepage.aspx

Or from the UK from stringsdirect here: http://www.stringsdirect.co.uk/Catalogue/ViewProduct.aspx?productId=821

Or from eBay (Brand New) here: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7411059667

Update: I now use a combination of the black (heavy / 9lbs) gripmaster, and the new extra heavy 11lbs gripmaster pro!