Every gym accessory always needs to be used as a complement and not as a necessity. They always help in a different way to every lifter, for example belts are helpful for core and lower back. In the case of lifting straps, they help support on the wrists when pulling weight as well as reduce the grip strength fatigue. This is excellent when the lifter knows how and when to use it. Therefore, here we explain how to find a balance between lifting straps and some strong and good looking forearms with excellent grip strength.
Lifting Straps
Lifting Straps are great to isolate the back muscles on pulling exercises, which can help us focus and target the muscles we want to develop. They minimize the risk of the weight slipping out of our hands and causing an injury, as an example deadlifts can be dangerous if we drop the weight on our feet, but also can injure the palm of our hands due to friction. Moreover, lifting straps should be used mainly on the top sets/drop sets/rest pause and PR attempts, where the weight is higher than we are used to lift, or our grip strength is already fatigued from previous sets and exercises.
Grip Strength
Grip strength is an essential element we need to have in order to perform everyday tasks. Carrying bags full of groceries or shaking someone's hand they all require grip strength. Moreover, forearms are one of the best looking, most visible and functional muscles we have, and people can tell whether you lift or not based on the forearms (taking into account also the rest of the muscles developed from lifting). But when it comes to doing exercises, grip strength is essential for all the pulling exercises, and some exercises such as pullups aren't required lifting straps at all. Therefore, forearms and grip strength are essential to be correctly developed for our daily use and for the gym lifting exercises.
Balance Between Both
In order to find the balance of the always arising question of how to find the perfect balance between both, here is what is most recommended to do. Only use the lifting straps on your top sets of pulling exercises: if you are performing 4 sets per exercise, you can use them on your last set, drop set, rest pause or PR attempts. This is because we will try to go till failure and this will mean that we will do more reps and effort than our forearms are used to do normally. As a result, fatigue may arise and failure will be achieved faster than when using lifting straps. On normal sets of exercises like lat pulldowns, dumbbell/barbell rows or pullups, lifting straps are not essential on the first sets since our forearms aren't fatigued yet. On the other hand, if your goal is to improve your grip strength, we recommend you read our blog post about it. In conclusion, our best advice for our readers is to find a personal balance and adjust the use of lifting straps per exercise. If your are performing an exercise in which your grip strength gets fatigued after a certain number of sets or after surpassing a certain weight. Then is when you will know when to use your lifting straps, therefore we recommend you just try and test the limits of your forearms and grip strength. And after this you will know when and where to use your Thunder Straps!
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