Tests and measures. 9 minute read.
How to test your grip strength at home, and what the number means
By the PocketPhysio editorial team. Published 2026-10-01.
The only grip strength test that gives you a number
A grip strength test is done with a calibrated handheld dynamometer, squeezed as hard as you can, and read in kilograms. EWGSOP2, the revised European consensus most clinics take their cut-offs from, puts the conditions in one sentence: accurate measurement "requires use of a calibrated handheld dynamometer under well-defined test conditions with interpretive data from appropriate reference populations" (Cruz-Jentoft and colleagues, 2019). Three things sit inside that sentence. The device, the method, and the reference range you compare against. Change any one of them and the number stops meaning what you think it means.
The device alone moves the result. A study in 67 community-dwelling older adults, mean age 76 years, compared a hydraulic dynamometer with a spring one and found the hydraulic device read 4.1 kg (9 lb) higher on average at the first session and 3.5 kg (7.7 lb) higher at the second, both differences at p below 0.001.
Each device ranked people consistently. Test-retest reliability was 0.98 for the hydraulic device, and for the spring device the paper gives 0.92 in its results and 0.96 in its abstract, both excellent either way, and the two devices correlated strongly with each other at 0.94. Readings on both devices were 7 to 8% lower on the second day, which is worth knowing before you read much into a small change in your own number. Even so, the authors concluded there is "poor agreement between devices, indicating a lack of validity" for using one in place of the other, and that device-specific cut-off points are needed (Benton and colleagues, 2022).
That is the part the shopping guides skip. A reading is only comparable with another reading taken on the same kind of device.
About the method circulating online, where you squeeze a bathroom scale and read off the kilograms: we looked for a published validation of it against a dynamometer and found none. Without one, nobody can say how its numbers relate to the cut-offs below. Squeezing something and watching the figure rise over the months is a perfectly good way to keep yourself honest about training. It is not a test, and it should not be read against any chart on any website, including this one.
The protocol, as the research does it
Sit down and keep the setup the same every time. In the 12 British studies that produced the normative values further down this page, 8 measured everyone sitting down, and most used three trials from each hand; the analysts then took the maximum of those values, because a maximum is less affected by how many attempts you were given than an average is (Dodds and colleagues, 2014).
So, in order:
- Take three good squeezes with each hand, with a rest in between, and record the highest number.
- Squeeze for two or three seconds rather than jerking at it.
- Note which hand, because the dominant hand is usually the stronger one, and note the device, because of everything in the section above.
- If you have high blood pressure, breathe steadily through every squeeze and never hold your breath.
Leave the maximal squeeze alone for now if you are recovering from surgery or a break in the hand, wrist, forearm or elbow, or if a hand or wrist joint is swollen and flaring. A hard squeeze loads healing bone and a repaired tendon, and it is the wrong load for a joint that is already inflamed. After surgery the protocol from your surgeon or hand therapist decides when a maximal effort is allowed, so ask before you test and let them take the reading when the hand is ready. Pain during the squeeze lowers the number anyway, so a reading taken through a flare tells you about the flare.
If you want the number to count clinically, have it taken clinically. Physiotherapists, occupational therapists and hand therapists keep a dynamometer and a protocol, and so do many pharmacists. The measurement takes two minutes inside an appointment you may be having anyway.
What counts as low
EWGSOP2 sets low grip strength at less than 27 kg (60 lb) for men and less than 16 kg (35 lb) for women. Those thresholds come from the British normative data below, at a T score of minus 2.5 or lower compared with the peak mean of healthy young adults, which is the same statistical idea used for bone density in osteoporosis.
What the consensus does with a low reading matters more than the reading. Its pathway runs find, assess, confirm, severity. Low muscle strength means "sarcopenia is probable"; the diagnosis "is confirmed by the presence of low muscle quantity or quality", usually on a scan; and when low strength, low muscle quantity or quality and low physical performance are all present, sarcopenia "is considered severe" (Cruz-Jentoft and colleagues, 2019). A squeeze is the assess step, the second of those four words, and it stops at probable. The find step before it is not a number at all: the consensus starts case-finding from symptoms, such as falling, feeling weak, walking slowly, struggling to get out of a chair or losing weight, or from the five-question SARC-F questionnaire, which you answer about yourself.
The paper is also careful about who the numbers came from. It states that its recommendations "focus on European populations and use of normative references (healthy young adults) whenever possible", and that because strength depends partly on stature, "we recommend use of regional normative populations when available". A single cut-off applied worldwide is a convenience, not a biological boundary.
What is average grip strength for my age?
The widest published reference set for grip comes from 12 general population studies in Great Britain: 60,803 observations from 49,964 participants, 26,687 of them female, aged 4 to over 90, measured between 1990 and 2012. Male grip peaked at a median of 51 kg (112 lb) between ages 29 and 39, and female grip at 31 kg (68 lb) between 26 and 42 (Dodds and colleagues, 2014).
Medians (the 50th centile) from Table 2 of that paper, for the ages people usually ask about:
| Age | Men, median grip | Women, median grip |
|---|---|---|
| 50 | 48 kg (106 lb) | 29 kg (64 lb) |
| 60 | 45 kg (99 lb) | 27 kg (60 lb) |
| 70 | 39 kg (86 lb) | 24 kg (53 lb) |
| 80 | 32 kg (71 lb) | 19 kg (42 lb) |
Read those as a rough map. Seven of the 12 studies used the same make of hydraulic dynamometer, two used a spring device, two an electronic one and one a digital one, and one of the seven had used a fifth make at its earlier wave. That is five makes behind one chart. To their credit the authors tested that, and reported centile differences of generally less than 10% when they split the data by dynamometer type, and the same when they split it by whether people were measured seated to protocol or standing, so the chart itself holds up. One subgroup did not: people who chose to sit or could not stand were weaker, and by the ninth decade their 10th centile ran close to 10% below the combined figures.
None of that settles whether one person's two readings on two devices agree. That is a different question, and the device comparison further up is the answer to it.
The authors also add a limitation that rules out the most tempting use of their own chart: the data are cross-sectional and "are likely to underestimate individual decline", so "our centiles should therefore not be used for monitoring individual trajectories in grip strength". Comparing yourself with other people of your age is what these numbers are for. Watching your own line move year by year is not.
Why people care about grip at all
Because it predicts things, in groups. EWGSOP2 calls low grip strength "a powerful predictor of poor patient outcomes such as longer hospital stays, increased functional limitations, poor health-related quality of life and death". A cohort study of 121,383 older adults across 27 European countries and Israel, followed for a median of 7.4 years, found that people in the strongest third of grip were less likely to die during follow-up than those in the weakest third: hazard ratio 0.41 (95% confidence interval 0.34 to 0.50) for men and 0.38 (0.30 to 0.49) for women. Across the whole cohort, whose average age was 64, the association ran up to about 42 kg (93 lb) in men and 25 kg (55 lb) in women and then flattened. In the subgroup aged 65 and over the authors found no such ceiling: risk fell with every extra kilogram (Lopez-Bueno and colleagues, 2022).
Prediction is not causation, and that study says so by its design. It is observational, 56% of those invited joined at baseline, and smoking, fruit and vegetable intake and physical inactivity were left out of the main analysis because they were missing for a large number of participants. Nothing in it shows that raising your grip number by itself lowers your risk of anything.
The useful reading is simpler. A hand squeeze is a cheap window onto how much muscle strength you have overall, which is why clinics measure it, and why a low number is worth a conversation.
A low number is a prompt, not a verdict
Plenty of ordinary things lower a grip reading on the day. Pain at the base of the thumb or in the finger joints, a wrist you sprained last month, a bad night, a hand that is cold, a medication change, or simply not pushing hard because you are not sure how hard to push. If your hand hurts when you squeeze, the number is telling you about the pain as much as the muscle, and the problem to sort out is the pain. Our pages on hand osteoarthritis and pain at the base of the thumb cover the two commonest versions of that in people over 50.
Grip also only describes grip. Someone can squeeze poorly and climb stairs well, or the reverse, which is why the sarcopenia pathway adds a muscle measurement and a performance test before anybody calls it a diagnosis. If you want two more measures you can repeat at home, our 30-second chair stand test and timed up and go test pages give the protocols and the published norms for each.
What to do if your number is low
Start lifting something, including with your hands, and get the rest of your strength looked at. Our strength program for older adults is the staged version: it starts with sit to stands and bodyweight work and builds load from there, and each exercise page carries its own dose. Many programs work out two to three times a week with 2 to 3 sets per exercise, and your physio will adjust this to your joints, your medicines and what you are training for.
Grip responds to being used against resistance: carrying, hanging, holding, and the gripping part of any weight you pick up. If you also feel unsteady on your feet, our balance and falls prevention program belongs alongside the strength work, and if you have thin bones, the osteoporosis program sets out what is safe to load and what is not.
Food matters here too, and it is outside what this page can advise on. A low grip reading with weight loss you did not intend is a combination to take to your doctor within a few days, rather than to a training plan.
When to see a physio (physical therapist)
Book an appointment if your reading sits below the cut-off for your sex, if one hand has clearly become weaker than the other, or if you have started struggling with jars, taps, bags or buttons. Bring the number and the device you used. An assessment separates a hand problem from a general strength problem from a nerve problem, and those three have different plans.
Do not wait for an appointment for anything on the warning list below. A grip that drops suddenly, hands that have become clumsy, or thumb muscle that looks wasted are different from a number that is a bit lower than you hoped, and each of those lines sets its own speed.
See a doctor promptly if
- Emergency: call emergency services straight away for any sign of a stroke, even if it goes away: sudden dizziness with unsteadiness or falling over, a face that droops on one side, an arm you cannot lift or keep up, slurred or muddled speech, weakness or numbness on one side of your body or face, sudden blurred vision, double vision or loss of sight, or a sudden severe headache.
- Emergency: new problems walking, for example your legs feel stiff, heavy or weak or you have become unsteady on your feet, new trouble controlling your bladder or bowels, or hands that suddenly become clumsy, for example you can no longer do up buttons. Call emergency services straight away. These can be signs of pressure on the spinal cord in the neck.
- Same day: hands that have slowly become clumsy, for example trouble doing up buttons or dropping things, or numbness in both hands. Get medical advice the same day. These can be signs of pressure on the spinal cord in the neck (cervical myelopathy) rather than a problem at the wrist. If the clumsiness or numbness gets worse quickly, call emergency services straight away.
- Same day: a finger joint, the base of your thumb or your wrist suddenly becomes much more painful, hot, red or swollen, or you have joint pain with a high temperature or feel hot, cold or shivery. Get medical advice the same day, and go to an emergency department if you feel very unwell. This can be a sign of infection in the joint, which needs treatment quickly. Gout can look much the same, and a doctor needs to tell the two apart. If you have a very high or very low temperature, shivering you cannot control, you are breathing very fast or finding it hard to breathe, you are confused or your speech is slurred, your skin, lips or tongue look blue, gray, pale or blotchy (on brown or black skin this can be easier to see on the palms of the hands or soles of the feet), or you have a rash that does not fade when you press it, call emergency services, as this can be sepsis.
- Within a few days: numbness in the hand that is there all the time, the fleshy muscle at the base of your thumb looks flatter or thinner than on the other hand, or your thumb is getting weaker and you keep dropping things. See a doctor within a few days rather than waiting for it to settle. If the weakness is getting worse from day to day or spreads beyond the thumb, get medical advice the same day. In long-standing cases the nerve can be damaged for good, and surgery may be recommended to prevent that.
- Within a few days: you are losing weight without meaning to, or your grip or general strength has dropped noticeably over weeks rather than years. See your doctor within a few days rather than starting a training plan, because unexplained weight loss and a fast loss of strength both need a cause found first. If you have had cancer, now or in the past, see your doctor within a day or two and mention it, and if you are being treated for cancer now, tell your cancer team.
- Within a few days: morning stiffness in your hands that lasts longer than 30 minutes, soft, puffy swelling over the big knuckles at the base of the fingers or over the wrists, or painful, swollen joints in your feet as well. This is not an emergency, but see your doctor within a few days, because it can be a sign of an inflammatory arthritis such as rheumatoid arthritis rather than osteoarthritis, and early treatment can stop it getting worse.
Common questions
What is a normal grip strength for my age?
Normative data pooled from 12 British general population studies, 60,803 observations from 49,964 participants, give median maximum grip values by age and sex. For men the median was 48 kg (106 lb) at age 50, 45 kg (99 lb) at 60, 39 kg (86 lb) at 70 and 32 kg (71 lb) at 80; for women it was 29 kg (64 lb), 27 kg (60 lb), 24 kg (53 lb) and 19 kg (42 lb) at those same ages. Male grip peaked at a median of 51 kg (112 lb) between ages 29 and 39, and female grip at 31 kg (68 lb) between 26 and 42 (Dodds and colleagues, 2014). Two cautions travel with those numbers: they were measured on five different makes of dynamometer in studies run between 1990 and 2012, all of them in Great Britain, so they are a rough reference rather than a target, and the authors state that because the data are cross-sectional, their centiles "should therefore not be used for monitoring individual trajectories in grip strength". A single reading below the median is not a diagnosis of anything.
What counts as low grip strength?
The revised European consensus on sarcopenia, EWGSOP2, uses less than 27 kg (60 lb) for men and less than 16 kg (35 lb) for women, taken with a calibrated handheld dynamometer (Cruz-Jentoft and colleagues, 2019). Those cut-offs came from British normative data, at a T score of minus 2.5 or lower against the peak mean in young adults. In the consensus, low muscle strength on its own means sarcopenia is probable; a diagnosis is only confirmed by also finding low muscle quantity or quality, and it is called severe when physical performance is low as well. So a reading under the cut-off is a reason to see a clinician and to start strength work, not an answer. The same paper notes that cut-offs depend on the reference population and advises using regional normative populations where they exist.
Can you test grip strength without a dynamometer?
Not in any way that produces a comparable number. Every published cut-off and reference chart for grip strength comes from handheld dynamometer readings in kilograms, and EWGSOP2 states that accurate measurement needs "a calibrated handheld dynamometer under well-defined test conditions with interpretive data from appropriate reference populations". The squeeze-a-bathroom-scale method that circulates online has no published validation study that we could find, so there is no way to say what its readings mean. Readings are not even interchangeable between dynamometers: in 67 community-dwelling older adults, a hydraulic device read on average 4.1 kg (9 lb) higher than a spring device, and the authors concluded that device-specific cut-offs are needed (Benton and colleagues, 2022). If you want a number that means something, ask your physio, doctor or pharmacist to measure it, or use the same device under the same conditions every time and treat it as your own baseline only.
How many times should you squeeze the dynamometer?
Three attempts with each hand is the usual research protocol. In the 12 British general population studies pooled for the published grip strength norms, most used three trials from each hand, and the analysts always used the maximum of those values (Dodds and colleagues, 2014). Rest between attempts so the third squeeze is not just a tired version of the first. Keep everything else the same when you repeat it later: the same device, the same seated position, the same time of day. If one hand is much weaker than the other and that is new, that difference is worth a clinical opinion rather than a retest.
Does grip strength predict health problems?
Low grip strength is associated with worse outcomes in large cohort studies, which is not the same as it causing them. EWGSOP2 describes low grip strength as "a powerful predictor of poor patient outcomes such as longer hospital stays, increased functional limitations, poor health-related quality of life and death" (Cruz-Jentoft and colleagues, 2019). In a cohort of 121,383 older adults in 28 countries followed for a median of 7.4 years, those in the strongest third had a lower risk of dying during follow-up than those in the weakest third: hazard ratio 0.41 (95% confidence interval 0.34 to 0.50) in men and 0.38 (0.30 to 0.49) in women, with the association flattening above 42 kg (93 lb) for men and 25 kg (55 lb) for women, although in the subgroup aged 65 and over there was no such ceiling (Lopez-Bueno and colleagues, 2022). That study is observational, the average age at entry was 64, 56% of those invited took part at baseline, and smoking, fruit and vegetable intake and physical inactivity were missing for a large number of participants and left out of the main analysis, so it cannot tell you that raising your grip changes your risk. Grip is best read as one sign of overall muscle strength, and a low reading is a reason to talk to a clinician.
References
- Cruz-Jentoft AJ, Bahat G, Bauer J, et al. Sarcopenia: revised European consensus on definition and diagnosis (EWGSOP2). Age and Ageing. 2019;48(1):16-31. doi:10.1093/ageing/afy169. Read 1 October 2026 at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6322506/
- Dodds RM, Syddall HE, Cooper R, et al. Grip strength across the life course: normative data from twelve British studies. PLOS ONE. 2014;9(12):e113637. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0113637. Table 2 read 1 October 2026 at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0113637
- Benton MJ, Spicher JM, Silva-Smith AL. Validity and reliability of handgrip dynamometry in older adults: a comparison of two widely used dynamometers. PLOS ONE. 2022. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0270132
- Lopez-Bueno R, Andersen LL, Calatayud J, et al. Associations of handgrip strength with all-cause and cancer mortality in older adults: a prospective cohort study in 28 countries. Age and Ageing. 2022;51(5):afac117. doi:10.1093/ageing/afac117
Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-10-01.
This page is general education, not a diagnosis or a personal treatment plan. See a physiotherapist or doctor for advice about your own situation.