From pouring the kettle to climbing a mountain
The handheld dynamometer – a device used by therapists to measure someone’s grip strength, measured in kilograms.
Before you read on, try to guess what number you might get on this contraption – the handheld dynamometer. Maybe you know already, maybe you don’t. Either way, it’s only relevant if you know what number is ‘normal’ and what does it mean anyway?
Last Friday after an innocent comment about grip strength, I immediately started a comprehensive survey of our staff unlucky enough to be sitting upstairs in the office. 5 minutes later there was a leaderboard on the wall with the measured values from 20 people – Physios, EP’s, OT’s, AHA’s, and admin staff.
Numbers ranged from 25kg to 35kg, with some outliers that come as no surprise if you take one look at the muscles on these particular staff squeezing 42.2kg and 59.9kg. But there were two quiet and smiling assassins who squeezed 43kg and 51kg … both of them are rock climbers.
The aim of our activity and enthusiasm was to investigate standard ‘normal’ values from the research and their practical implications in life. It changes slightly across age groups, but an average adult woman without injury or neurological problems can squeeze 23-37kg and men 37-57kg.
But what does this relate to in real life?
How much grip strength is required to pick up and pour a kettle? Or open a jar? Or climb a mountain? There are no definitive answers (because it depends on several other factors) but my gut feeling is that someone who can only squeeze 5kg will struggle to lift a kettle safely; women who achieve 20kg can manage most tasks they might face in the kitchen except perhaps a rogue jar lid which would be conquered by someone who can squeeze out 40kg… and if you want to trust your entire body weight to your long finger flexors, in rock climbing or otherwise, then you might need to aim for 50kg or higher.
And what about people with neurological conditions?
As mentioned above, we can speculate on the grip strength needed for daily life tasks but within the neurological population, it is not only grip strength that comes into these tasks. We also need to consider the strength of other muscle groups, the shoulder, the elbow, etc., and the coordination and sensation required to enable someone to have adequate arm function for a particular task. So, whilst there is value in measuring grip strength in an individual, as it does give us one way to measure the change in that particular individual, it needs to be taken in the context of their broader functional capacity. That is where the skill of our physiotherapy and OT team comes into play, using a series of measures of strength and function to analyse where someone needs to focus their rehab to build capacity for the tasks that are important to them.
If this strikes a chord with you, if you have goals around your arm function or hand use then please do reach out and chat with your therapist or give reception a call to discuss your options.
By Alanna Vaz – ARC Physiotherapist