Friday, December 23, 2016

Grip

When I first started strength training, I didn't own a pair of straps, so I did all of my pulling work (deadlifts, rows, pull-ups, etc) without straps. Because of this, I never had grip problems. So when I started using my straps a lot more often a couple of years ago, very slowly my grip strength started to suffer, and I barely noticed it was happening.

Fast-forward to the start of this year and any moderately heavy farmer's walk was held back by my grip (my solution was to put my straps on and continue, making the problem worse) and the top sets of all my deadlift days were getting cut short because my left hand would start to open up after a few reps (and my solution, again, was to put straps on and continue, making the problem worse).

The solution was pretty clear; stop using straps in training.

It's been a slow and humbling process and it's taken a while, but finally my deadlift sets are being held back by other issues now and I can comfortably farmer's walk with competition weights without worrying about my hands opening up for the last few steps.

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