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Strengthening your grip is a pretty wide array of topics, truthfully. When we talk about grip strength we talk about a few different things: crushing, supporting and pinching.

Crushing is what you have when you close a gripper. It isn't the same thing as supporting, like holding a barbell. Lastly you have pinching, which is very heavily dependant upon the strength of your thumb. The others... not so much.

Hook gripping has you wrap your hands around the barbell, then overlap your thumb with (typically) your first and middle finger, though there are variations on this. Try it some time, hurts like hell. I suppose you get used to it, but it replaces a strap with your thumb... I've played with it a bit, but in all honesty I don't see the benefit in hooking while deadlifting.

mixed gripping, one hand over and one under, might take some getting used to, but for the vast majority of trainees it is the best possible method to grip more weight without straps. In a dual overhand grip the bar tends to roll. At some point this happens to everyone... however if you hook, there is nowhere for the bar to roll to, as your thumbs are strapping the bar in (did I say OUCH earlier? ) In a mixed grip the bar is stopped from rolling by the opposition of the hand. Simple solution.

The other thing you can do is simply use straps. go without as long as you can, then switch to using straps. If you are not planning on competing in powerlifting, I simply can't see a reason to avoid straps. If you want to train grip, train grip. The DL isn't really going to train your grip.

I absolutely disagree with this.

If you train double overhand grip while deadlifting heavy weights your forearms will be worked...hard. Lift as many reps as you can with double over and then when you feel it starting to fail, switch to a over-under style.

Your grip will be trained. How could it not be?

IronWorker

Saying that DL is good for grip training is like saying curls are good for the lower back because you have to stay tight to counter balance the weight...

Trust me, anyone that knows about grip training will NEVER tell you to just go dead lift. It isn't sufficient. In fact, I would say rock climbing is FAR superior as a grip trainer, but it doesn't make much sense to prescribe that either.

I didn't say DLs were the best way to train grip but I was disagreeing with you saying that doing DL's will basically do nothing for your grip. I don't know what you do with your grip but what I do is do more DLs. So training my grip by doing DLs transfers very well to ... using my grip strength for DLs.

If you're into some UFC, or climbing or whatever else then sure, train other ways. Or maybe you just want to be able to turn rocks to dust. I don't know?

Anyways, I've never run into a situation where doing DLs with double over grip hasn't been enough and I think this is the case for most people that train as much double overhand as they can.

And I don't think your curls --> back strength as compared to DL's --> grip strength is an equivalent analogy at all.

Don't take this as offensive but thats my 2 cents.

IronWorker

Well, there are things you can do that wil certainly bring your grip up much faster than your DL. In fact, my grip strength is pretty far out in front of my DL, which would make just training DL and nothing else... well, it would make it de-training for me. Anyway, dead lifting isn't really considered a test of grip strength. Powerlifters aren't deadlifting to improve grip strength, grip strength is necessary for DL's. That was kinda my point. That is where I was drawing my back/curls example from. Lower back strength may be a requirement of heavy curls, but it is not the target of heavy curls, and if your mindset tells you that the way to train your back up is to do more curls at heavier weight... you are right, there is SOME training effect there, however it isn't the target and it is a pretty inneficient way to develop grip strength.

If the only thing you are ever worried about is how much you can put on a bar and hold, then maybe you wouldn't need to train outside that parameter. I compete in strongman, and I put my hands through a lot of work. Heavy farmers, tire flips, stone loads, keg carries, hand over hand rope pulls, axle deadlifts... pretty much everything in strongman starts at the hands. With the exception of something like the yoke walk, I'm drawing a blank as to any events that are truly "grip free." Things like tire flip and stone loads are open hand, finger-tip strength. Deadlift doesn't help that. However, that fingertip strength will translate over to deadlift. In fact, in my experience, just about any OTHER kind of grip training vastly helps your grip on deadlift, while the supporting grip of a standard bar deadlift simply isn't sufficient to help anything else.

Well I definately see what you're saying especially in relation to your strongman style training. I'm sure there will be a day when I need to train my grip some other way to complete my deads without straps ( I don't use them now but I mean...the weight is always increasing). When that day comes or if I see it approaching, I will start training my grip in other methods.

IronWorker