Lifting straps or chalk: which one your deadlift needs

A heavy deadlift can stop for two reasons. Either your back and legs cannot move the weight, or your hands cannot hold on to it. Straps and chalk both deal with the second problem, and they do it in different ways. Once you know which problem you have, you know what to reach for.

Find out what is failing

Watch the bar on your last hard set. If it rolls towards your fingertips, or your hands open before the rep is finished, your grip is the limit. If the bar stays put and the rep stalls at the knee or at lockout, your hands are fine. That rep is about strength and technique.

Sweat is the other clue. If your palms are damp and the bar slides even on lighter sets, you are short of friction. If your hands are dry and still open on the heavy sets, you are short of grip strength.

What chalk does

Chalk is magnesium carbonate. It soaks up sweat and leaves a dry, slightly rough layer on the skin, so the bar has something to hold on to. Chalk adds friction. Your hands still do all the holding.

That makes chalk the first thing to try. It helps on every pull, and because your hands keep doing the work, your grip keeps training with the rest of you.

It comes in a few forms:

• A chalk ball is a mesh pouch you squeeze between your palms. It leaves less dust around, and some gyms that ban loose chalk allow a ball. Our refillable chalk ball holds 56 g.
• Loose chalk and blocks give the most chalk for the money, which suits a home gym or a gym with chalk bowls. See loose chalk and chalk blocks.
• Liquid chalk dries into a thin layer that lasts for several sets. It suits very sweaty hands and gyms with a strict no-dust rule. See liquid chalk.

Check your gym's rules first. Chalk the palms and the inside of the fingers before each heavy set, then clap off the extra.

What straps do

Straps take part of the load off your fingers. You wrap the tail around the bar and roll it tight, so the bar hangs partly from your wrists. With straps on, you can keep pulling after your hands would have opened.

That matters when your back and legs can do more than your grip allows. Heavy rows, shrugs, rack pulls and the top sets of deadlifts are where straps earn their place. They let you train the big muscles with the load those muscles need.

The trade-off is that your hands do less. Strap every set and your grip falls behind the rest of you, until you struggle to hold a weight without them. A common approach is to keep straps for the heaviest work and leave them off for warm-ups and lighter sets.

Our padded lifting straps are 60 cm long and 38 mm wide, with a neoprene pad where the loop sits on the wrist. For very heavy pulls, figure-8 straps lock your hands to the bar more firmly. They are also slower to release, so keep them away from cleans, snatches and anything you may need to drop.

A simple way to use both

For a deadlift session of 5 × 5, try this:

1. Warm-up sets: bare hands, no chalk.
2. First two work sets: chalk.
3. Last three work sets, or as soon as the bar starts to slip: chalk and straps.

Your grip works on most sets, and the last sets end when your legs and back are done. You can also hold a double overhand grip with chalk for as long as it lasts, then switch to straps. That saves you from using a mixed grip, one palm forward and one back, on every heavy set.

Train the grip on its own

If your grip is often the limit, give it some direct work. Two or three short sessions a week are enough to start.

• Hangs from a pull-up bar: 3 × 20 s with chalk.
• Hand gripper: 3 × 10 per hand. The adjustable hand gripper runs from 10 to 40 kg, so you can start light and turn it up in small steps.
• Thick handles: clip thick bar grips onto dumbbells for rows or curls, at a lighter weight than usual.
• Opening the hand: finger extensor bands balance all that squeezing.

Leave a rest day between grip sessions, as you would for any other muscle.

Wrist wraps do a different job

Straps and wraps are easy to mix up. Straps help you hold a bar. Wrist wraps hold the wrist in line under a press, and they do nothing for your grip on a deadlift. Stiff wrist wraps belong on the bench press and the overhead press.

In short

Start with chalk. Add straps for the heaviest sets once your grip is the reason a set ends. Train your grip on its own so that moment comes later. The First heavy pull routine pack puts straps, wraps, chalk and a gripper in one box, with a 7-day plan that says which to use on which sets. Or browse straps and wraps and grips and chalk.