How to Properly Use Straps for Pulling

by Mark Rippetoe | December 31, 2024

There is a role for straps in
strength training for the serious lifter. Heavy pulls are not grip
exercises, they are pulling exercises, and grip strength cannot be
allowed to determine pulling work set weights. Straps are used for
completing a pull that could not otherwise be finished – if your
grip is not strong enough to finish your work set of 5 deadlifts –
or for heavy overload pulls that must be done with a double-overhand
grip, like rack pulls or heavy shrugs.

Understanding
how pulling straps work is crucial to their correct use, so let’s
examine this for a minute. Your grip – in tension, not compression
– is the ability of your fingers to maintain an encircling
contraction around the bar against the weight of the bar working to
open your finger/thumb flexion. If you have to use straps, it is
because your finger/thumb flexion cannot maintain an isometric
contraction against the load. Straps then connect your arms
to the bar, not your fingers, so that you can keep pulling on the
load. 

When you strap, the strap
wraps around the hand with the fingers unloaded, and the fingers just
keep the strap wrapped around the bar, trapped between the bar and
your hand. Your fingers keep the strap closed around the bar, but
fingers do not support the weight itself if the strap is tight enough
around the bar. Straps hang the load from the hand above the fingers
and below the wrist, enabling you to pull more than your unassisted
grip can hold in flexion. Straps actually connect the load to the
arms, while the hands just keep the straps tight between hands and
bar.

Straight
Straps or Loop Straps

Straps
come in two different designs. The oldest design – which actually
works very well – is just a long piece of webbing, 1.75 inches wide
and 28 to 32 inches long. A piece of seat belt webbing works well. It
is looped around the hand below
the wrist and above
the knuckles, with both ends held together by the fingers while the
process of wrapping it around the bar is completed. It is wrapped
from behind
the bar around it, in the direction opposite
the fingers, for one
complete circumference of the bar (see
figure 1, from the Blue Book, figure 4-51). One side at a time is wrapped, the non-dexterous hand going first
since the dexterous hand doesn’t need the help.

Rip demonstrates how to put on straps in the video segment above.

If this is done correctly, all the slack is removed from the wrap and the strap is in firm contact with the hand, the bar, and the fingers – a solid connection that removes the fingers from the chain. Correctly strapped, you can pull any weight you can actually move off the floor, or even the pins from a partial position.

Loop straps have a loop sewn in one end of the strap big enough for the width of the strap, with the other end of the strap fed through the loop – like the “honda” at the end of a lariat rope. This produces a bigger loop for the hand that gathers around the wrist or the hand, leaving a single piece of strap hanging down to wrap around the bar, which makes it a little easier. But the price paid for this is the security of the wrap: you cannot get all the slack out of this assembly, and at the end of the set the strap will be looser since the body of the strap will have continued to slide through the loop. This means that a loop strap does not really take all the load of the bar off the fingers.

Loop straps are fine if you want to strap onto dumbbells for curls, but for heavy pulls they are essentially useless since they do not secure the bar in the grip. However, loop straps are the only kind lots of people know anything about, actual straps apparently being a lost technology, like the ability to land a man on the moon.

Strap material is important. Leather stretches. Cotton webbing tears, usually at exactly the wrong time. Seat belt nylon is indestructible, and is cheap at junkyards. The best is nylon strapping for securing loads on truck beds or hand carts. I’ve had two sets of straps made out of 1.75-inch white nylon webbing for the past 25 years in this gym. It’s not as slick as seat belt strap, and has a slightly ribbed texture that makes it hold more securely when wrapped around hands and bar. It’s so tough it would be difficult to cut with a sharp knife, and it cannot be worn out.

When to Strap

In short, don’t strap if you don’t need to. If the weight is a warmup set, or a light exercise like a barbell row, you don’t need to strap. Your grip will not get stronger if you cannot do your warmups without straps. As the weight you pull goes up, your unstrapped last warmup goes up, and your grip strength increases without compromising your work set weights. Likewise, some overload pulls are designed to be strapped, and at some point in your training your pull will not go up if you limit the exercises to loads that your unaided grip can handle. Heavy overload pulls are not grip exercises – they are pulling exercises, and your grip should not limit their weight.

Rack pulls and heavy shrugs are examples of overload exercises, and are supposed to use weights that have to be strapped. Deadlifts need not be strapped every workout – the alternate grip and hook grip options make this unnecessary. But overload work like rack pulls and heavy shrugs cannot be performed with the proper loads without straps, so learn how and when to use them.

Barbell rows do not need straps. Cleans do not need straps, since humans cannot clean more than they can hook-grip. Cleans cannot be done with straps because of the wrist angle required to rack the bar many wrists have been fractured with straps. Heavy snatches do not need straps, and if you miss a snatch behind while tied to the bar with straps, you now have a shoulder injury. The exception to this is snatches for doubles or triples – weights that are easily managed – and some lifters use straps on some higher-volume snatch workouts to save their hands. If using straps for snatches, most lifters find that narrower 1-inch webbing is more comfortable around the wrist, in addition to being easier to release if there’s an accident.

Straps are necessary equipment for the serious lifter. Used properly they are not a “crutch” or “cheating” or a shortcut. They enable you to make progress on your pulling strength. Get used to the idea that some pulling has to be done with straps. 

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