Today’s post will be one of those, that might be not really interesting to you. It might even seem annoying, but it has a huge importance, if you want to advance in the gym and be injury free.
As you know deadlifts are one of my favorite movements. There are a lot of key moments, that you should pay attention to, when you perform the exercise. And even if you are advanced and you think that there is nothing else you could work on, when it comes to your technique, trust me you have, the more you advance, the less you will need to worry about the hardships that some beginners face. But still, you will stumble over some new challenges, which might unconsciously force you to make a mistake, which could later on lead to an injury.
What am I talking about?
Today I want to pay attention to deadlifts, performing them with the mixed grip, and the grip strength as a whole.
As you know I’ve made every single stupidity in the gym, so I have a big arsenal of mistakes, that you shouldn’t do yourself! Today’s topic is not an exception. When I started deadlifting, everything was going smooth, until I reached about 180 pounds on the bar. Then I faced some struggles to deadlift more, not because I did not feel strong enough, but because my weak grip was stopping me. So what did I do? Well, of course I tried the mixed grip. The mixed grip is the one where one of your hands is supinated, and the other one is pronated. This creates more stability and this immediately allows you to lift weights, that you previously could not pick up from the ground.
At first the mixed grip might feel funny, but if you use it a couple times, it will become natural.
So where is the problem with the mixed grip?
The problem was, that I find it convenient to always supinate the same hand. I did not alternate my hands. And this was a big mistake!
Thus, as the time went by, one of my sides got stronger than the other and as Gray Cook says If one of your sides is stronger than the other, you are in serious trouble! You just don’t know it yet!”
So in order to stay away from imbalances between both sides, my advice is to alternate your hands when you us ethe mixed grip. Either alternate them on each set, or on each workout.
Besides that always do your warm up sets with the traditional grip, so you can train your grip strength.
Use the mixed grip mainly for big weights. The same is true for straps. I often see people in the gym, who grab the straps, immediately when they walk in the gym. This is really wrong and it just spoils you. If you always use straps, you are missing on the opportunity to strengthen your grip and it is really important, if you want to increase the weight on the bar and keep yourself healthy and injury free.
And if you do not want to be dependant on the mixed grip, you should take more time to train your grip strength.
Here are some ideas:
Farmers walks ( use different weights- dumbbells, bumpers, strong man “bottles” and so forth. The different kind of weights, will bring for a different stimulus. I strongly recommend you the bumpers.)
Use Fat Gripz.
Do pull ups on thicker bar. This will make more muscles on your forearm to activate.
Raw with heavy dumbbells.
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A pic from my workout yesterday 🙂
