Why Wrist Straps Should Be Banned!

Exhibit A: A common wrist strap.

We've all heard this before (hell, I've said it myself a ton of times)... "I could have lifted more but my grip gave out." So to prove that we're not all talk, testosterone driven men like myself put on some wrist straps and lift that mother f*cker. WOOOO! Well... that's probably a pretty stupid move in the long term (not in the short term... chicks dig heavy weights). Kidding of course... women tend to find that kind of stuff repulsive. I'll give the guidos out there a few seconds to catch their breath after that psyche shattering revelation ;)

Your grip, and the amount of strain necessary to keep your grip from breaking, serves as a barometer for your musculoskeletal system. The harder you must squeeze to lift a weight, the more neurological excitation there is in the system, which causes this thing called neurological overLOAD, and then leads to neurological overFLOW. You see, you have nerve bundles centered on each one of your vertebrae (spinal bones) that control different muscles in your body. When one of these nerve bundles gets overloaded (say, by you trying to deadlift a bunch of weight), the electric signals overflow into adjacent sets of nerve bundles and consequently recruit more muscles to contract in order to help you lift the weight. So check this... you ca

n easily tighten your grip into a fist without a need for neurological overflow. But when you try to deadlift hundreds of pounds, keeping your fist closed into a fist is no longer such an easy task. Your brain now says, "Hold up, I need to get more muscles in on this thing." So it activates muscles from the neck all the way down to the toes. To demonstrate this, ball your fists up and squeeze as hard as you can. Notice the shaking, the tightening of your abs, the strain in your neck and traps? THAT is neurological overflow. Your body NEEDS this to protect itself from injury. 

Franco Columbu did not use wrist straps when entering
Beast Mode.

SO back to the wrist straps... When you wrap these puppies around a barbell you can lift the load with significantly less grip strain. As a result, your  brain says, "Hey, this sh*t's easy. I don't need to recruit more muscles to lift this up." Then BAM! your shoulder pops of out socket, you slip a disc in your spine, or you damage an elbow joint. All because you used a wrist strap to impress the other dudes in the gym (since we've already established that these macho displays of manliness don't actually impress females). 

Here's what you need to do instead... build up to the heavy weights in a gradual manner, and do auxiliary exercises that deliberately increase your grip  strength. One of my favorites is simply holding a barbell bell in front of you at waist level for 60 seconds. Slap a 25 or a 45 on either side at first and go heavier as you get stronger. Another great grip strengthener is to just hang from a pull up bar for 60 seconds. You'll see your grip strength increase pretty quickly. 

So bottom line my friends... if you can't lift it, DON'T. Save yourself some money, and prevent potential injuries, by going strapless.