Thickbar Vs Regular Bar Deadlift

[patrickmeniru]

I took my fatgripz to the gym after work recently and decided to try deadlifting with them. I pulled 130kg to about the knees but missed the lift - which was a big surprise to me.

For background, relatively recently I had a similar miss on 220kg double overhand on a texas power bar from a deficit (so slightly harder on grip IMO because the pull takes longer).

Was very surprised to lose the best part of 100kg as I had thought my overall hand and forearm strength was decent, I do lots of pull-ups, handstand work, can easily close my #3 from a wide-ish set both hands etc.

I imagine the best way to improve is likely to be to practice more fatgripz work, but I wondered if people had any advice on improving support strength generally and if other people had similar discrepancies between double overhand on regular vs thickbars.

Cheers in advance, and interested to hear about other people's experiences. Pat

[climber511]

I would base things on successful lifts - not near misses. But in reality, that is not unusual at all. Fat Grips are 2 and 3/8" - even bigger than an IM Axle - for which you will also find a significant loss on compared to a standard Texas Power Bar with it's fairly aggressive knurling.

As for advice on support grip development in general - finger curls in the rack and rack pulls with holds for time are good as are many other things as well.

[patrickmeniru]

I would base things on successful lifts - not near misses. But in reality, that is not unusual at all. Fat Grips are 2 and 3/8" - even bigger than an IM Axle - for which you will also find a significant loss on compared to a standard Texas Power Bar with it's fairly aggressive knurling.

As for advice on support grip development in general - finger curls in the rack and rack pulls with holds for time are good as are many other things as well.

Hey thanks for the reply and for the tips! I was also wondering whether the thumb played a more important role in thickbar work (and if so how best to train it) as I don't feel like it is that heavily recruited with a regular bar.

With regard to the misses I appreciate that it's conventional to compare successful lifts but having thought about it, in this instance I honestly can't see how comparing misses which were virtually identical is any less valid than successful lifts - in some ways it seems to me a more accurate comparison because a miss that you get air on basically shows the absolute limit of your strength in that exercise (i.e. in that relatively narrow ability level where you're strong enough to break inertia but not strong enough to complete the lift). If you compare successfully completed lifts then it's hard to knowhow close your strength level at that exercise was to the weight successfully lifted (i.e. it could be just a fraction more, but could also be significantly more) whilst at the other end of the spectrum, if you fail to break inertia it's very hard to know how close you were to doing so.

Anyway I digress. I'll definitely look to do some rack pulls and finger curls.