Deadlifting with straps

[Bharath Mukkati]

This is not a concern. Once you get your deadlift up past 700lbs, you can worry about this.

Great to know!

You need to be eating 200 grams of protein at an absolute minimum.

Do not "shoot for" anything. You need to be at 180 pounds yesterday.

Alternate grip will not create a muscle imbalance if you make even a token effort to switch hands every now and then. Log it if you like, but just doing it "the opposite of last time" should suffice.

Learn how to hook grip. You need to learn to hook grip to power clean. If you are not power cleaning, you are fucking up.

I am struggling to eat enough food to consistently increase my weight day over day. I prefer to eat whole food and minimize processed foods, so they fill me up and I feel scared to put food on my plate these days. So, going from 161LB to 180LB is going to be a great challenge. But I am here to try and continue with NLP for 6 months at least.

You need to be eating 200 grams of protein at an absolute minimum.

Do not "shoot for" anything. You need to be at 180 pounds yesterday.

Alternate grip will not create a muscle imbalance if you make even a token effort to switch hands every now and then. Log it if you like, but just doing it "the opposite of last time" should suffice.

Learn how to hook grip. You need to learn to hook grip to power clean. If you are not power cleaning, you are fucking up.

I'm doing power cleans as per the NLP programming. I'll start getting used to hook grip. Thanks for your feedback.

Well done on gaining weight - keep that up, and you'll probably want to keep the protein intake steadily going up as your weight does. I have learned the hard way that there's a very distinct relationship between missing my protein intake and not recovering well.

Hook grip can take some getting used to. One approach is to warm up with double overhand until the last one or two warmup weights, hook those, and then use alternate for the work set. That trains the hook grip without overdoing it, which definitely helps over time. Not everyone uses the hook grip for heavy deadlifts - it's okay. Short fingers, for example make it harder to do.

The general take I've seen from Rip and other informed people is that imbalance/injury concerns with the alternate grip are overblown in general, and not a big deal until a lifter gets into very heavy weights anyway (like 700s). If you want to switch up from time to time, that's not bad in itself, but I wouldn't obsess over it. Lots of brutally strong people have used it, and most of them without issues.

Appreciate your encouragement and detailed advise on how to approach the grip problem step by step. Let me try them in the coming weeks training sessions.

About 200gm protein and the importance of ensuring I consume it for recovery is very useful. I was targeting body weight equivalent protein intake (160-170lb) and increase it as I gain weight but perhaps that is not enough. The only meat I eat is fish, I also eat eggs and tofu. So, I'm going to adjust my diet to add more protein. Also, yeah, I'll have more milk and whey protein.

The problem with the alternate grip is not that it creates a strength imbalance per se but rather that the supine arm and shoulder are loaded asymmetrically and subjected to a different set of mechanical stresses. This has some implications for the performance of the lift (i.e. the tendency of bar to drift away from the leg on the supine side) and injury prevention (i.e. the potential to overload the distal biceps tendon, especially when performing the lift incorrectly). I'd argue that if you're training with alternate grip, you should do it the same way every time both for the practice aspect and for the adaptation aspect.

Assuming you're pressing, benching, and chinning, you're getting more than enough symmetrical arm work to counteract any minor "strength imbalance" that might occur from the isometric contraction that the arms perform in an alternate grip deadlift.

There's nothing wrong with using alternate grip if it's more secure; I have moderately short fingers so it works better for me, too, at heavy weights. But you should still be using the hook for your power cleans.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and insights. It helps me move forward from my apprehensions on trying alternate grip.

[heinz83]

The Hook Grip with Short Fingers | Paul Horn

[Bharath Mukkati]

The Hook Grip with Short Fingers | Paul Horn

Nice! Thank you.

[Daniel Town]

Are you competing? If No, use straps. If you can strap 405, you can grip 315. If you can strap 495, you can grip 405. Main point is...just get your deadlift up anyway possible. Don't let your grip be the limiting factor for you to up your deadlift.

[Bharath Mukkati]

Just updating the thread here. It has been a few weeks now since I checked-in. I am able to progress steadily with alternate grip for deadlifts. I start warm up with double overhead and go as far as I can push and then switch to alternate grip for my working set of 1x5.

I tried hook grip a few times, but my thumbs hurt. I have not given up on it, I am using hook grip in my warm up sets and trying to learn it over time.