Thick Grips for large handed lifters

[JMWatson]

Team SS,

Thoughts on using thick grips at all times for big handed people? Especially for bench and press's

Read this on T-Nation for taller lifters

Increasing the surface area of the bar in your hand distributes the load much more evenly. More importantly, it places the load closer to the forearm – properly stacked above the wrist.

The problem is that many lifters who use a conventional thumbs-over grip will let the wrist "break" ever so slightly when carrying the loaded bar in a press position.

Lifters with larger hands are at a greater disadvantage when this happens since the bar will be positioned farther away from the wrist and forearm when they allow for this break in the wrist, simply due to the increased size of the hand.


Thank you

[Karl Schudt]

I think a thick bar makes it harder to grip, and that properly setting the barbell in your palm for the press would work for tiny lifters as well as large lifters. In other words, get the barbell in the palmar crease by the thenar eminence (the bump of the thumb), wrap your fingers around the barbell, and grip it hard. A bigger barbell would make it harder to grip it hard.

Get the barbell over the radius, and keep it there, by setting it properly in your palm, and the problem goes away.

[KangaJoo]

There's an extra thick bar at my gym (maybe 32 mm) and I can assure you it does not make it easier to keep the bar over stacked above the wrist. Holding the bar correctly makes it easy to keep the bar stacked above the wrist. The extra thick bar just makes squats uncomfortable and loose, PR deadlifts impossible, and everything else just feel awkward which is why literally everybody moves that bar onto whichever station isn't being used.

[Michael Wolf]

As T-Nation often does, the article identifies an issue which they claim is common - let's just grant for the sake of argument that it is - and then instead of suggesting using good coaching and cueing to actually fix the problem, and maybe providing some of that knowledge, comes up with some more complicated, unnecessary workaround THAT WILL ALSO MAKE YOU SO JACKED! I exaggerate, but only a little.

I was a big fan of a lot of the mainstreamish, perform-better circuit type gurus from like 2006-2009 or so, when I finally realized almost all their articles and content was a variation on this theme, and they paid lots of lip service to the big lifts and getting stronger, but almost all their content was coming up with unnecessarily fancy and complex ways to avoid doing those movements and loading up heavy.

Are there exceptions to the rule for whom some of that stuff is useful? Sure. But they're very, very rare if you can actually coach the movements skillfully.

But in this case, I don't even think the thick bar "solution" is actually a solution, as Karl and Kanga have already explained and with whom I agree.