The hook grip is a great tool for a lot of barbell movements, mainly the olympic lifts. Grabbing that thumb under your fore and middle finger locks the bar into your hands so you can rip that bad boy as far up as needed. Anyone who doesn’t use the hook grip on the snatch and clean needs to just try it once. Trust me from personal experience that you will never, ever go back to lifting without it. However, the Deadlift is not a time to hook grip. I know some of you might be yelling at me through your computers right now, wondering why I have deceived you so much up to this point when I say “hook grip everything” in class. I promise you can all hit me with a PVC one time as penance.

Joking aside using the hook grip on the deadlift can be dangerous for 2 reasons. If any of you out there have found that your elbows really hurt when you deadlift, and you happen to hook grip that sucker, then it is likely this is contributing to that elbow pain. Just sitting here reading this go ahead and grab your thumb with your two fingers into a fist just like you are hook gripping. Feel where tension develops in your elbows? That is your various wrist flexors and ulna tendon/nerve group that are mainly used for gripping things with a fist. Using a hook grip for repetitive, heavy deadlifts creates a lot of tension that can lead to tendonitis in your elbow focused around these tendons. No good! To get the same effect as the hook grip on the deadlift you should be using the switch grip, having your palms facing different directions.

Another reason the hook grip on the deadlift is bad is it limits the development of your neuromuscular pathways in which we use our hands to move objects. In other words, we get less adept at using our hands to move heavy ass weight! Go ahead and grab something without a hook grip, then grab it with it. Which do you “feel” more? If you answered the non-hook grip way that is what I am going for. Because the hook helps lock the object (in our case a barbell) into your hand it limits the neurological response of your brain having to really work to keep the hand closed. This interferes with the communication of the Central Nervous System (brain, spinal cord) and the Peripheral Nervous System (outside of brain and spinal cord) to pull and press things held in the hands.

While hook gripping cleans and snatches is a must, the relative low weight and reps compared to what we would do for a deadlift makes this negative effect minimal. However, since with the deadlift we are usually using heavy weight in relation to what we normally lift it needs high end motor units and muscle fibers for us to move it. If we are doing so in a way that interrupts our CNS-PNS neural communication with our hands this means we are training our body to not communicate fully with our hands. This causes problems when we are asked to do so. Consistently using the hook grip on heavy and high rep deadlifts makes us less and less capable to move and manipulate heavy weight with our hands gracefully.

For today’s workout play around with your hand grip. Since there isn’t a lot of grip intensive movements going on then try using double overhand for as many sets as possible. This will help develop the deadlift muscles in the back and shoulders evenly. Then when you would normally use a hook grip start using the switch hand grip instead.

Happy deadlifting!!

 

MONDAY

Core Conditioning

Core: 3 rounds

for max reps, 1m for each movement

Situps

Burps

Forearm plank

Hollow Rocks

rest

 

WOD: For Time

Run 600m

50 Toes to Bar

Run 600m

50 Barbell Good Mornong

Run 600m

 

CrossFit

Strength: Push Press
4-4-3-3-3

WOD: 5 Rounds
5 Deadlift 225/155
10 Ring Dips
15 Box Jump 24/20 (full stand)

S: 135/95, Pushups
L1: 155/105
Rx+: 275/185, 27/23 (45# plate on regular size)

 

The Program

1. Strength: Push Press
4-4-3-3-3

2. WOD: 5 Rounds
5 Deadlift 275/185
10 Ring Dips
15 Box Jump 27/23

3. Snatch Work
EMOM 10m : 1 Power Snatch + 1 Squat Snatch

4. Core Work
5×12 Toes to bar, rest 45s between efforts

5. 40 Strict HSPU (8m time cap)