[quote]Shontayne wrote:
[quote]babaganoosh wrote:
[quote]Shontayne wrote:
[quote]its_just_me wrote:
I don’t see the point in trying to train your grip separately for the sake of a lift that does exactly that anyway. Your grip strength increases really quickly. [/quote]
Agree.
On something like shrugs i dont use straps untill my grip has become the limiting factor. Then i use the straps so that my traps are cooked. Best of both worlds?
Unless you are pretty advanced, a competing bodybuilder or have particularly small foearms I dont see the need to train them directly YET![/quote]
I do the same, but some of us just have a weak grip… without chalk I can only hold onto 4 plates for about 5 reps, and I’d need to use a mixed grip for that, however I can shrug a lot more, the problem is when I get up to about 5 and a half plates the grip is the limiting factor even WITH STRAPS, so in my case, it’s getting to the point where I need to start doing direct grip work, even though I am no where near strong/advanced/dont have big traps/forearms/etc[/quote]
Thats interesting! I would guess that as you become more advanced at this your grip will catch up pretty quick? If this has not been the case i would still personally just throw in a few static holds into my routine in preferece to forearm curls or a designated forearm workout etc.
Im not saying dont train muscles directly, dont get me wrong. Just from personal exprience my grip strength has always caught up to increased demands.[/quote]
I don’t know, my traps seem to get stronger quicker than my grip does. I actually like reverse curls and such for building overall mass on the arms, but I don’t think they help with grip much when it comes to the bigger lifts like deadlifts/shrugs/etc. My grip held me back on the deadlift for a while, it just wouldn’t get stronger, as soon as I caved in and started using straps I went from a 308 deadlift → 440 in less than 2 months… previously it was at 308 for what felt like forever (it was actually only about a month or two, lol).
Anyway, I believe there are a number of reasons why my grip may now be lacking
- I stopped doing mixed grip to avoid bicep tears, muscle imbalances, etc which means my grip doesn’t get quite as much of a workout as it used to
- I use straps when I know that my grip will give out mid-set (no point ruining a back workout because of my grip)
- doing excessive warmup/ramping sets with a lighter-than-top-set weight just to give me grip a good workout seems silly because it comes at the expense of working the target muscle properly, so I may go from 315 x 8 → 405 x 5 → etc even though my grip is capable of 365 x 10 but not capable of doing 405, so the grip doesn’t exactly get a great workout
- I’ve found straps actually help the lift even if your grip is still semi-ok, so sometimes I may even use them early. I see it as similar to shoulder pressing while standing up.
- my grip DOES NOT catch up to increasing demands like you guys, I am pretty jealous, lol.