Originally Posted by
Michael Wolf
Right. The main thing I'd point out for a beginner is:
DOUBLE OVERHAND GRIP IS NOT A HILL TO DIE ON.
I see this mistake a lot. New lifters don't realize (even though it's referenced in the book) that when your grip isn't super duper secure, the rest of your muscles won't fire as hard, either. They pick up on a vibe that they should double overhand until they can't anymore, and take it VERY literally, and get stuck because they think the weight at which their DOH grip fails must be too light and they have to push through it.
No. Just no. You DOH as long as you can generally, not on a literal "till the bar falls out of your hands" level. Since newbies don't know when grip is becoming a limiting factor, my rule of thumb is that, however many reps you're doing (presumably five but even if not), you should be able to hold the last rep up at the top at lockout for at least 3 seconds. If you can't do that, you need to switch your grip IMMEDIATELY because your reps are already affected by the lack of grip security, and failure is closer than you think.
For the switch to hook or mixed, some corollaries to that:
1. If you're going to use a hook grip when it gets too heavy to double overhand, start building up to it in your warm-up sets 4-5 workouts out to save yourself a lot of pain. It'll still hurt, but tolerably so.
2. If you're going to use a mixed grip, do it for every rep and every set the first 3-4 times, because it will feel real awkward and the extra exposures will help you acclimate early on. After that, just start doing it one set before you truly need it so you don't go into that set changing something.
3. For Pete's sake, DO NOT DIE ON THE HILL OF DOUBLE OVERHAND GRIP. Seriously. Stop this idiocy.