When we do a physical activity, our body reacts and adapts to the exact stimulus we subject it to. The next time we perform the activity, we’ve improved efficiency at the cellular level and so can move more weight, apply more speed or increase power production. The trouble is that all too often, we get stuck in a familiar routine – keeping the load, exercise selection and sequence and all other variables the same. As a result, our body stops adapting, reasoning that “We’ve been here before.” So our progress – however you want to measure that – plateaus and we’re stuck.
There are multiple ways to overcome such an issue, including changing the volume, intensity and density, switching up the order we perform the chosen exercises and tweaking our warm up and recovery protocols. Another very simple and actionable way to mix things up is to simply change our hand position. Here’s how varying where and how you place your hands on an object, implement or the floor can help:
Photo: Livestrong.com
Emphasize Different Muscle Groups
Say you like to do pullups. Your traditional, overhand grip is just fine, but if you flip your hands around and assume an underhand grip, you’re stressing different muscle groups. There will be more emphasis placed on the biceps and a little less on the lats (those fan shaped muscles on the outside of your upper back). If you do a set of each type of pullup, you might notice tension in different places the next day – like the upper chest and top of the triceps.
Change up The Stimulus
At a cellular level, our body doesn’t really know that we just did this or that exercise. All it recognizes is the set point it was operating at and it has been stimulated. As a result, it reacts to adapt to this stress, and then tries to return to some kind of equilibrium. By changing your hand position, you’re altering the stimulus you provide to your cells, and so causing them to adapt in a different way. This can help you bust out of a rut in just about any exercise.
Photo: Kettlebellunion.com
Work on Weak Points
Just as people who are the most proficient squatters do different types of squatting – front squats, back squats and overhead squats, for example – so too should you change up how you perform certain exercises that you’ve always done the same way so you can work on your weaknesses. So if you’ve always done conventional deadlifts but your performance has flatlined due to a weak grip, try a mixed grip variation (with one overhand and one underhand grip). You could then take this a step further by moving your hands closer together or further apart than usual. The latter will involve your lats more. You could even move your feet as well – placing them wider apart while also moving your hands closer to the center of the bar to perform a sumo deadlift.
Prevent Overtraining Certain Positions
One of the issues with sticking with the same way of lifting time and again is that your body can start to suffer from repetitive strain. Making a seemingly small change like varying your hand position can help prevent this, as the loading and sequencing of muscular contractions will be slightly different than in your normal routine. So try experimenting with different hand placements and grips and interchanging these with your go-to’s.
