re: How can I strengthen my grip?

I can tell you how to strengthen your grip better than anyone here

1. Train with Captains of crush and Gillingham High Performance Hand grippers. There are plenty of routines with these, they will train your "crush" grip.
2. Buy 2.5 or 3 inch fat grips, and use them on all of your pulldowns, deadlifts, pull-ups, and any dumbbell work
3. Throw your lifting straps away
4. Train your forearm extensors and flexors-do this by doing standard and reverse wrist curls.
5. Find flat-sided plates, and pinch them together. Your horizontal pinch grip strength will determine what you can hold. Pinch grip has a heavy carry-over to other lifts
6. Do pull-ups with towels around the bar, a towel for each hand.

This is just a sample. If you you're interested in more, there's a lot of good reads out there on all of the above.

Thanks for all of the suggestions.