Why do my hands hurt so much? How do I strengthen my grip for BJJ?
Most times when beginners complain about their hands hurting, it’s mostly a technical issue. Beginners tend to grip too hard when they shouldn’t and waste their grip. I see this a lot even with young healthy guys.
When you are grabbing someone’s gi and they aren’t actively trying to break the grip, just grip gently with a mostly relaxed hand. You only need to grip hard for short durations.
When you’re gripping, make sure your wrist is perfectly straight and put a little bit of tension in your wrists so they don’t bend. Bending the wrist weakens the grip considerably. Your opponent will try to bend your wrist in order to help break your grip. Gripping hard with a floppy wrist is very counterproductive. Roger Gracie explains the importance of wrists here:
Whatever you’re trying to do with your grab on the gi, if you try to do it by just using your arms, it will burn your arms a lot more than if you use your body positioning and legs and core properly.
e.g. if I am on the bottom of closed guard and I have my hand in his collar setting up a cross collar choke and he’s trying to push away that hand with both of his arms, if I just try to pull him down with my arms, it will put a lot of strain on my grip. But if I realize that now his arms are not posting on my body, I can easily just sit up, clinch him and pull him down.
In summary, training your grip strength is well and good, and I do recommend doing it, but especially for beginners, problems with grip are mostly technical and not physical, and the fix is technical, rather than just trying to strengthen your grip with exercise.