25 Days to Fix Deadlift Grip Strength

I’ve got a meet coming up on June 22. I’ve pulled 600 twice, but the last 2 times I’ve tried to pull 605 it’s fallen out of my left hand. Today I was doing block pulls and worked up to 585. Again, I felt my grip start to slip as I have the other times when approaching 600.

What can I do to improve my grip strength before the meet? I spent the first 6 weeks of the cycle including farmers walks, but didn’t see any carryover.

Here’s last meet’s miss.

I saw Ed Coan talk about single arm barbell holds for grip once. Maybe try those. I’m curious to see what other people recommend

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Double overhand barbell hold. Pull a double overhand dead and hold for time.

If you are dropping deadlifts, spend more time holding on to deadlifts.

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Assuming you have your peak for the meet planned out already I’d try to avoid additional grip work that will tax the body. I’ve had success doing dead hangs from a pull up bar for time. If it’s too easy with both hands you can do one armed hangs, or one hand plus 1/2 fingers only on the other hand etc.

I do. I’ve never trained my grip with additional work, so I’m not sure what I can get away with. My thought is to train it with very low volume 3-4 times per week in a separate session. I always have the taper to dissipate fatigue if I feel my grip strength waning.

Maybe when warming up do DOH as long as you can and also hold at the top for a while to make it more challenging. Grip recovers fast so you can do it a few times a week or as often as you do deadlifts and variations.

You can do holds at the top with mixed grip also. Maybe long long ones on your last rep of your heaviest sets. I’ve seen a lot of lifters do both these to clear up any grip issues they had (Brett gibbs IIRC) so I don’t think it adds much overall extra fatigue for holding it in the easiest position for the rest of your body.

Grip is mostly like CNS or neural drive or something, so you don’t need to build new muscle to make it stronger. Think positive, you can totally make it stronger in a short time!

I like the idea of the overhand deadlift hold after deadlifts. For specificity.

The Ed Coan 1 Arm thing is great too. Its easy to work in on non DL days for more frequency.
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A short lift off the pins with 1 hand. Using the other hand to lock in and brace against the power rack for safety. I was just messing with this a couple month ago and it works pretty fast i and is really easy to load and progress.

You could also consider the Hook Grip. Some people have trouble with it, but others " get it" pretty natural. Botslayer did some great videos about hook grip, posted here in the PL section, if you want more info.

While I was pulling mixed grip I found these to help. I also dropped it form the non-supinating hand. I never found some extra grip work too taxing on the body. The ring-finger-pinky pinch I found useful as that is where my grip started to fail first. James Strickland also has incorporated a lot of those for his full power meet.

Josh Bryant Grip Strength

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What about static holds with weight added using a towel on pull up bar. Should be some carry over.

Leave it for your next cycle back into powerlifting training after your meet. You’ll probably just stuff things if you try fix it with 3 weeks left (assuming the last week is a deload, how much are you going to fix in 2 weeks?).

The lesson is don’t expect the grip required for farmers to carry over to deadlift. I second the Josh Bryant recommendations.

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kroc rows

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This right here is the best answer. Double overhand holds are the main thing, start with 50% of your max DL for 2 rounds of 15 seconds, you can do this twice a week since you have a major problem. Just don’t overdo it and don’t do grip work the day before deadlifting or you will end up dropping even lighter weights.

I’m going to go against everything everyone is saying, you’re not going to fix your grip in 25 days.

What you can do is optimize it. Do some body tempuring on forearms.

Don’t forget the triceps

A good massage therapist can manually do these as well. Remember if your pinky goes out your entire grip goes out. Find the weak link ( hint it’s probably your triceps/forearms/lats ) and fix that to instantly get grip back.

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I don’t know about 25 days, but one things that helped mine a ton were a set or two of super high rep shrugs double overhand. Push them weekly at the very end when your hands are already taxed and keep track of weight and rep records. Start with something you can do for 25-50 in a set and build from there.

Also, I second holding your work set deadlifts for longer at the top on the last rep.

Now that’s a hand job!

Haha, cool stuff, good post.

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Thanks for all the tips! I’ll report back with results.

Fixed it and pulled a PR! I did 5 second holds, since that is about how long the rep takes from start to down command, and worked up to a 5 second max over 3-5 sets. Did that 2x per week outside my deadlift session and then also held my last deadlift rep as long as possible.

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Great pull! Beast dude.

Freaking animal! Sure didn’t look like a PR, looked like a warm up rep!