Could a Routine Blood Draw Affect Your Grip Strength?
I’m in the process of scheduling annual bloodwork and already dreading the process. Sound familiar?
Many of our Bridging® Institute clients have their unique horror stories to tell about multiple stick attempts, unsightly bruising, and painful elbows. These are traumatic in so many ways!
However, the bigger issue is the long-term effect of the procedure on your grip strength. Yes, blood draw trauma often causes issues with the arm and has an impact on grip strength!
Read on to learn more about why. The good news it that once the muscles are supported, your strength resets quickly, and I’ll share how to do this.
Grip Strength and Bicep Activation
Good grip strength is more than a nice thing to have for opening jars and bottles. This specific strength has been shown to have a tight correlation to health and longevity.
What does grip strength have to do with the trauma from a blood draw?
Often, a lot!
There are two reasons — the tight tourniquet around the bicep/triceps, and the elbow trauma of being stuck right where the biceps tendon attaches to the forearm. Each trauma can cause the muscles to go offline and get stuck that way.
But wait, those are arm muscles! Yes, and the arm muscles are the strength helpers to the hand and finger muscles. Grab onto something and hold tight. Notice how all of the muscles in your arm activate?
Part of the Bridging® process is paying attention to the mechanical interconnections which impact the neurological function of the body. If the muscles aren’t oriented correctly or are missing the right tension to communicate with each other, the signals for activation get lost.
How can I tell if my biceps activation is impaired?
Easy enough. Make a light fist with your hand (blood draw side) to the front of you. Turn your fist clock-wise, or thumbs to the right. This motion should activate your biceps muscle. Use your left hand placed above your elbow to feel for it. This should not be a subtle change. Your muscle should tighten and bulge, just like Popeye.
The muscles at the elbow
The biceps and triceps muscles are up the food chain from the hands, and usually a bit larger than finger and forearm muscles. When we need more strength, our bodies begin recruiting helpers. The first line of help for the hands is the biceps and triceps.
This illustration shows why the biceps muscle is often disrupted with a blood draw. The end of the muscle sits right where they are trying to get your vein!
You can also see the muscles in front and behind the upper arm bone (humerus). The biceps and triceps can be stressed from a tight tourniquet or from one being in place for more than a few seconds. The tension disrupts the coordination between the two muscles.
How pokes at the elbow impact your muscles
In this short video, see the ways that your arm muscles work together, and how they can benefit from support after a blood draw (or IV).
Have your exercise or therapy professional watch too. They should be able to help your arm regain its strength.
How does this get ‘fixed’?
If you discover that your biceps muscle isn’t activating when your turn your fist per above, what can you do?
Your personal trainer or physical therapist trained in corrective exercise might want to change your arm or hand position to find an angle that the biceps will work. This works well for a workout. For real life, not so much. For everyday tasks you are not going to stop and reposition your arm to recruit your stronger muscles.
Here are some tips for trying to restore your biceps muscle activation on your own:
- Positioning matters: Your arm muscles need to function in a variety of angles and positions of openness or flexed. When your biceps muscle doesn’t activate easily, your body will automatically shift your elbow and shoulder, but this creates an unnatural stress. Over time these joints begin to ache, and its not overuse or getting older.
- Support to enable a reset. Support the affected elbow area to get the muscles back online and then working together as a group. For a blood draw, this is usually a matter of a soft support at or above the elbow, while gentle rocking and rolling the area of the tourniquet or needle stick.
- Reorganize and reintegrate! The biceps muscle also has the job of stabilizing the triceps muscle for it to function. To reset this relationship, make a fist and turn your hand side down like doing a Karate chop. Lightly push down or backward against a stable surface. The resistance of the surface helps you body activate the triceps. This restores the pairing of the biceps and triceps muscles.
Your upper arm is now ready to easily come to the assistance of your hand as you grip to open that pesky pickle jar or water bottle lid!
If you need more help after trying the above steps, share this newsletter and the tips that follow with your trusted exercise or therapy professional.
Thoughts for Your Movement/Therapy Professionals
Recovery Gaps Identified from Blood Draws
🟦 Medical Procedures (Blood Draws)
Suggestions for therapy and movement professionals
If your client/patient has had a tough time with grasp and grip strength, there is likely elbow trauma to resolve. Here are some steps to consider:
1. Support the elbow area with one hand to stabilize the joint. Use the other hand to gently rock and roll the biceps muscle at the area of the needle trauma. Once the muscle calms down and is ready to work again, the movement in the area becomes wiggly and bouncy.
2. Make a light fist and supinate. Stabilize the affected elbow while your patient/client makes a light fist. Next, ask them to turn the fist thumb side out. The supinating motion will mechanically activate the biceps muscle. If it does not easily activate, go back to step one and try slightly different angles of support until the muscle activation is automatic and easy. Repeat the wrist motion in a variety of arm angles to make sure the biceps activation pathway is robust.
3. Micromovement reintegration of the entire arm. Stabilize the patient/client’s elbow and place your other hand at the edge of their wrist. Have them push down into your hand lightly. This motion should engage the biceps muscle in its stabilizing role for the triceps muscle. The triceps should activate without involvement from the shoulder. If you sense shoulder muscles stabilizing, repeat the resisted elbow extension with a lighter movement. The threshold for activation is low; you don’t want to overpower it.
Taking each of the above into account allows the impacted muscles to relax and reorganize more quickly, and can guide you to a more complete restoration of grip strength.
If you’re interested in learning the Bridging muscle resets to better help your patients after injuries, there is a new cohort kicking off September 9, 2026 and it’s not too late to still join. All the info is on the website here.
What’s Next: Solving Vestibular Mysteries with Balance Testing