There was a great piece of research published last year in the BMJ, about the correlation between grip strength and various health outcomes, including mortality. Yes, mortality. It seems that higher strength is associated with health and with living longer. No real surprise there. What interested me, particularly was that grip strength is a good indicator of general muscle strength.

It seems, therefore that clinicians can use grip strength as a general indicator of our health. Not surprisingly, Andrew has bought a grip strength tester, a dynamometer. Maybe he\’ll test your grip strength!

What we don\’t yet know is if increasing the strength of our muscles will make us live longer. Maybe, or maybe not! Anyway, it makes sense for us to try and improve our general muscle strength, something that many of us have neglected to do, at the expense of only working on our cardiovascular fitness.