Weightlifting Straps
Weight straps (about $10 a pair online) and weight belts are often worn simultaneously at the gym by power lifters. Straps are used to strengthen your grip on heavy weights so they don't slip out of your hands during an exercise. To be honest, I don't use them I just use weight gloves, but I've seen lifters use them for exercises such as stiff-legged deadlifts, shrugs and bent-over rows.
Like weight belts, you should only use straps when you absolutely need to. To avoid looking like a fool don't use them during your warm-up sets or for exercises that everyone else knows you don't require them for such as chest presses or bicep curls.
If you use wrist straps incorrectly, they can actually work against you and increase the chance of the weight slipping out of your hands during a set and landing on your head, foot, leg, etc. So listen to the experts folks and wrap your weights the proper way. This was again taken from the mouths of bodybuilding experts:
- Never twist your weight straps they should be flat when applied.
- Run the free end of the strap through the looped end.
- Place your wrist in the loop. The loose end should always point away from your body in line with your little finger.
- ATTENTION THIS NEXT PART IS WHERE MOST OF YOU GET IT WRONG!
- Wrap the strap around the bar from underneath and up, not over the bar and down.
- Once both straps are around your wrists, grip the strap and roll the bar back toward you.
Make sure the straps aren't too tight or you may cut off the blood flow to your wrists. And I don't think I have to warn you that numb wrists are bad when you're lifting heavy weights. A too-tight strap can also break. Trust me, I saw a guy get slapped in the face by a rogue strap while lifting a 500-pound barbell now that'll leave a mark!
