Top 5 Exercises for Lifting Straps

Lifting straps are an excellent accessory for your workouts, especially for pulling exercises. There are many ways in which they can be used but in this post we will show you the main exercises in which you can use your lifting straps to maximize your workout performance and isolate your muscles. For every gym accessory, it is recommended its use only for top sets in which we need that extra little help in order to achieve a new PR or a heavy set in which we want to reach failure. Therefore, lifting straps as well as belts, knee sleeves, wrist wraps... Should be used as a complement but not as something the lifter relies on for every set they do on their workouts.

With this taken into account, lets look at the 5 best exercises you can use your straps for:

1. Deadlifts (Conventional, Sumo, Romanian)

Using lifting straps in deadlifts offers several benefits that can enhance your training experience and overall performance. Firstly, lifting straps provide a secure grip on the bar, allowing you to focus more on engaging the muscles in your posterior chain, such as the hamstrings, glutes, and lower back, without worrying about grip fatigue. This can be particularly advantageous when performing heavy deadlifts or high-rep sets where grip strength might become a limiting factor. Sometimes while you are deadlifting, when dropping the weight after every rep there is a bounce on the ground from the weights. This can cause the hands loose grip from the barbell due to the vibrations. Lifting Straps also allow you to use neutral grip instead of mixed grip as you would normally do in order to reduce the forearm fatigue. Therefore, for heavy sets, this won't happen when using lifting straps, and since the Thunder Straps have a high thickness. There isn't any chance of being uncomfortable and feeling the magnets on your hand while lifting (magnets are unnoticeable on the hand). Additionally, lifting straps also help minimizing the risk of injury, since if the bar slips out of the hand, this can cause a hand injury because of friction with the skin. But also you could also drop the weight on your feet. By alleviating grip concerns, lifting straps enable you to lift heavier weights and target your desired muscle groups more effectively, ultimately leading to greater gains in strength and muscle mass over time.

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Using lifting straps in bent-over rows can significantly enhance your training experience and the effectiveness of the exercise. By securing your grip on the bar, lifting straps allow you to concentrate solely on engaging the muscles of your upper back, including the lats, rhomboids, middle back, traps, and lower back without being limited by grip strength. This is particularly beneficial during heavy or high-volume sets, where maintaining a strong grip can become challenging as fatigue sets in. Additionally, lifting straps can help improve the mind-muscle connection by reducing the reliance on forearm and grip strength, enabling you to better isolate and target the muscles of the back for maximum muscle activation and growth. With lifting straps, you can lift heavier weights and perform more reps with proper form, leading to greater muscular development and strength gains over time. And in this case, more reps can be achieved before failure since we are isolating the movements were are performing. This will result in a overall better development of the back muscles we are targeting on each exercise. On barbell rows the straps can be used with normal or reverse grip, that doesn't matter since the wrapping around the bar just changes direction from forwards to backwards. But yes wrapping the straps backwards can be a little bit challenging the first few times. Moreover, on dumbbell and t-bar rows the same logic applies, since the straps are wrapped around with normal or neutral grip, offering an overall improvement on the mind-muscle connection!

Cable rows are great in order to maximize your back strength. They offer a constant tension on the muscles which some free weight exercises don't offer. The principal limitation on seated rows is the forearm fatigue especially on the upper part and the brachioradialis, which can prevent you from achieving more reps. Moreover, single arm rows are easier to grip since the attachments are normally made out of silicone grip. Silicone grips are easier to grab therefore straps normally are not needed in this exercise, but still recommended if your grip is already fatigued from previous sets and exercises and you want to achieve failure. 

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Cable Pullovers can be challenging since it is very easy to do the form incorrectly. Other muscles can be targeted if fatigued or using too much weight. This is normally with forearm fatigue causing a worse connection with the back. Therefore, using straps in this exercise is an excellent option in order to correctly target the upper and mid back as well as the lats on the cable pullovers. This can be applied to any type of attachment being wider or shorter, straps are still effective.

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