Why do people use lifting straps

Power cleans are okay, but still dangerous if you end up going into a squat clean. This raises the issue that you only want to wrap your straps around the bar once, no more, so you can release your grip and get away from the bar if you miss it. I would never recommend using straps while warming up, but there are always exceptions to the rules.

For example, Waldemar Baszanowski and Olympic champion and many-time world champion and record holder actually warmed up using straps, and his first competition attemp was his first lift without them. He said he did this to save his hands for the competition.

If you use straps when doing the lifts in training, I recommend that you stop using them one or two weeks before a competition so your hands will be strong and tough. Besides developing a dependency, your hands might get soft and then be susceptible to tears. When I'm teaching beginners I don't have them use straps at all, as I want them to develop their grips and I know that their grips will give out before their backs or other parts.

After three months I let them use straps for pulls and deadlifts only. That is pretty much how I have my advanced lifters use them as well. When lifting from the hang or off the blocks we use straps, but again, not for cleans. One more little story about using straps when injured. In , Dan Cantore carelessly went to put kg back in the squat racks after a set of front squats. He sort of tossed the bar into the racks and it bounced off and back and caught the tip of his left ring finger on a sharp edge of the squat rack and cut it off.

We picked up the tip and took him to the emergency room. They weren't able to sew the tip back on, so they grafted some skin from his biceps area. Three weeks out he started doing pulls, and two weeks out he started doing the lifts with straps. He used straps for every lift in training and only went without them at the competition.

He didn't lift his best, but he lifted enough to win and make the Pan Am Team. Straps have an important role in your training, but don't get dependent upon them. Use them for pulls anytime and for the lifts very sparingly. For more information on Olympic-style weightlifting, weight training, lifter profiles, and competition reports, visit our Weightlifting Resource Pages.

Main Navigation. At this point, wrist straps act as a helpful tool to let you keep building your strength. The reason why lifters use wrist straps is that grip strength often acts as a limiting factor during heavy pulling movements, including deadlifts or rowing variations. Strength potential is amazing, but often the grip, controlled by the smaller forearm muscles becomes the limiting factor.

Though there are hand techniques to minimize this, like a mixed grip or hook grip, to prevent the bar from slipping, there is always a limitation.

They eliminate the demand for grip strength by locking the wrist to the bar. This is why wrist straps are used, by eliminating the possibility of grip failure, you can lift a max lift, with your only constraint being how much you can physically lift. Do wrist straps help bench during a workout?

Yes, they do. They make a significant difference for people with a weak grip. In fact, every serious lifter carries a pair of wrist straps in their gym bag. Use wrist straps for the immediate benefit of being capable of lifting more weight without your grip failing. But, also think of ways to train your forearms and hands to build your natural gripping abilities. Wrist wraps are wrapped around the wrist to keep it secure. They provide safety when pressing because of possible wrist overextending.

Their purpose is to keep your wrist neutral. Wrist wraps help prevent wrist injuries and keep the wrist pain-free. This is important for exercises like bench press and overhead press because, in these exercises, the barbell has to sit in the base of your palm with the load directly on a neutral wrist.

But as the weights get heavier, your wrist can flex backwards uncontrollably. So, wrist wraps keep the barbell directly stacked on your wrist. Wrist wraps should only be worn, during heavy pressing exercises like bench press or overhead press because your wrist can get in a vulnerable position, and you can overextend it leading to injury.

A wrist wrap will provide support around the joint to keep it in position and minimize the risk of injury. Buy wrist wraps if your wrists do not stay neutral when you lift. Another reason to buy wrist wraps is to make the weights feel lighter, when you lift, in your hand and to raise your confidence under heavier weights in general.

However, most people are not comfortable cleaning with straps and until they are I do not encourage their use. Using them primarily for pull variations or off the blocks, any of these materials are just as good as the others in my opinion.

The purpose of straps is to allow the lifter to focus only on the pull portion of the lifts versus focusing on the grip. While there seems to be much debate over their use for this reason, I will say, yes, you are correct - we do neglect the grip, but we do so on purpose. There are plenty of other opportunities to strengthen the grip but for now, my goal is to get a lifter to concentrate on their pull without worrying about doing them incorrectly due to a weak grip.

And, grips do weaken. Think about your common every day weightlifting workout. You might go from cleans to snatches, to hang cleans, to jerks and over time, the grip gets tired. With poor form comes injury. Hence the powerful benefit of strap use. Straps are used with all pull portions of the two Olympic lifts - the clean and jerk and the snatch.

Primary use is for pulls from the blocks. Straps serve the purpose of keeping the grip strong and secure so that the bar does not slip. In the pull portion, the lifter creates a tremendous amount of power output and straps keep the bar secure in the lifters hands.