The tests

What is a good grip strength for my age?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20262 sources

Above the middle for your age and sex is a good grip. In a big US survey, the best squeeze of each hand added together peaked in the 30s, at about 216 lb for men and 136 lb for women, and fell slowly after that. Find your row below, then train your whole body and let your grip follow.

Grip charts online are a mess, and it’s not your fault if yours made no sense. Some show one hand and some show both. Some use kilograms, some pounds. Some take your best try and some your average, on different gauges, sitting or standing. A man who squeezes 100 lb with one hand can look weak on one chart and strong on the next. The table here comes from the US national health survey (NHANES), and it adds the best squeeze of each hand together, so you need a number for both hands to compare.

The US grip table

Both hands added together, in pounds, from 3,497 men and 3,400 women in the 2011 to 2012 survey. The bands are the ones the scorecard uses. Under the 20th percentile is Building, the 20th to 50th Fair, the 50th to 80th Good, and the 80th and up Strong.

Men

Women

A man of 45 who squeezes 100 lb with his right hand and 95 with his left has 195 lb in all. That’s Fair for his age, 13 lb short of Good. A woman of 55 with 62 and 60 has 122, right on the middle for her age, which is Good. If your gauge shows kilograms, multiply by 2.2 to get pounds. The survey started at 20, and the scorecard uses the 20s row for 18 and 19.

The dashboard light

Grip works like the oil light on a car’s dashboard. The light tells you something about the whole engine, which is why mechanics pay attention to it. But polishing the bulb won’t fix the engine. A strong grip mostly means a strong, healthy body behind it, and that’s the part to train.

The biggest study of grip and survival is called PURE. Researchers measured grip with a hand gauge in 139,691 adults aged 35 to 70 across 17 countries, from cities and villages, and followed them for a median of four years. Each 5 kg (about 11 lb) less grip went with a 16% higher risk of death from any cause and a 17% higher risk of death from heart disease. Grip predicted both better than systolic blood pressure did. One surprise was what it didn’t predict. Grip had no link with injuries from falls or with getting diabetes.

PURE shows a link. It can’t show that squeezing a gripper every day would change anyone’s risk, and nobody has run that trial. The myth page on grip training goes through why.

How the survey measured it

Everyone stood with feet about hip width apart and the arm straight down by the side, holding a digital gauge. They squeezed three times with each hand, switching hands each time, with a minute between tries on the same hand. The best squeeze from each hand was added together. Test yours the same way if you own a gauge, or use a dead hang if you don’t. How to test your grip at home covers both.