I injured my back years ago dead lifting. I still have issues every now and then. The injury made me very aware of how I feel from day-to-day. If I have a day where I feel a bit off, then I will use my belt for lighter weights. On a good day, I go beltless and strapless as long as I can on deadlifts
I believe using a belt has helped me learn and feel how to brace better. There was a thread around here about a 600 pound dead left years ago. That motivated me to start deadlifting again. At the time, my max was 450 on a deadlift bar. Today I pulled 455 on a regular bar fairly easily without a belt or straps. My back has never been as strong as it is now and a belt has helped me get to this point.
Today we did some overhead pressing and then the BFR stuff again on leg extensions and leg curls. It is freaking brutal on leg extensions. My buddy took pictures of my grimace he showed me after - the struggle was real!
You want Blocks of chalk. There has to be a solid chunk that you rub onto your hand. It’s not gonna look hard core if you’re carrying around a little yellow sachet of powder.
In my experience - no. There are some that have the menthol thing going with it (for numbing effect) but i couldn’t tell the difference if it weren’t for the smell.
I keep mine in an old vegan protein powder container because…
to remind my wife to never but vegan protein powder again (i told her not to buy this one, but she insisted; shes not vegan either)
its the perfect size for my hands.
You can also get the liquid chalk stuff if you want. Its enough to help with grip but not enough for actual protection if you’re in the business of fcking destroying your hands like I am. Still, it does the trick if you’re using old lady weights
I used a mesh collander to turn my first brick into powder - no ragrets. I still actually have a lot of that brick/powder left over and I’ve had it for years (almost 5 now?).
Any lifting chalk will do the job. The blocks are nice to rub on your hand but you will want to put it in a bucket because they usually just crumble and fall apart as you rub it on.
Yep exactly that. I bought a bag of powder (that sounds well dodgy) rather than a block and keep it in a tupperware container. I use this when I am training in the home gym. When I am putting it on there is usually a little spillage so I either lay down my towel and put the container in the middle or step outside to put the chalk on. When I am in the commercial gym, they have a big bucket full of blocks of chalk. There I rub it on, shake the excess off in the bucket and then usually clap my hands to make big dust clouds for effect before my deadlifts… LOL
While we’re at it, do you all “account” for carries in any special way? I figure just treat it like hard conditioning, but I’ve never previously done them particularly heavy.
Hard for me to answer exactly because the only carries I do is the sandbag and barrel stuff. I have been looking for some heavy dumbells to use for farmers but they are pretty expensive. I dont program the carry stuff, I just call it hard conditioning and do it once a week. I think Brian Alsruhe has some videos on carries and how to include them.
tagging in @T3hPwnisher and @Koestrizer@DoubleDuce because I know they do a fair amount of weighted carry stuff.
FWIW, this is how I do it too. JW doesn’t seem to like heavy carries as “hard conditioning,” so I deviate from the 5/3/1 gospel here, but…
I used to do them quite a bit more frequently, and CT had some great articles about ways to leverage them effectively—I followed his stuff when I first started with them, and found it to be sound advice.
CT talks about them a lot within the context of a holistic program, which sometimes makes my pea brain hurt.
I won’t be able to really dig into heavy stuff for a few weeks because of travel anyway, so it’s likely to take care of itself
I agree on liquid chalk. That’s what I’ve had and I just don’t like it that much. Actually chalking my hands I had no grip issues, so that was a nice discovery!
