Is there risk of injury when hook gripping heavy deads?

[Rootskier]

I have been working on increasing my hook grip strength and pain tolerance for awhile and find that it's easier to do sets this way than with a mixed grip. It just feels more natural and balanced.

A Crossfit trainer I know and trust in most things recently saw me deadlift around 375 for 5 with a hook grip (max is 458.5 mixed grip) and told me he thought it was "risky" to push the limits of what you can pull with a hook grip. I was pretty surprised to hear him say this, but since I deadlift far more than he does I'm not too worried. However, he does know far more about anatomy than I do and warned of the dire consequences of thumb injuries.

What do you guys think?

edit: shit, can't edit titles, I meant to put "heavy" in quotation marks.

[blowdpanis]

With a practiced hook grip, generally your posterior chain strength is going to give out before your grip strength, so I'm not really sure what hidden danger lies in store for you other than beat up thumbs.

I went bananas and did a heavy for me set of 10 in hook a couple months back, and it did make my right thumb somewhat numb for days afterwards, but all the feeling came back. I think that's just part of the fun of hooking your pulls.

[matclone]

I don't see the risk. It seems to me that if you're pulling something too heavy for your thumbs or hands, to the extent they might injure you, that they'll give out first. I'm not even sure what sort of injury your Crossfit guy is contemplating. The question after that is: what evidence (if any) does he have about hook grip injuries?

[Jason B]

Hook grip is fine. I wouldn't worry about what any crossfit guy has to say about heavy weights.