Can’t Hold Onto The Deadlift Bar?

Have you been working so hard to improve your deadlifts? And you're finally able to lift that weight that you've been working for months only to not be able to hold onto the bar because you feel like your hand's just gonna let it go. How disappointing is that, all that work makes your legs stronger, all the lunges, all the knee extensions, all the squats, everything you’ve been working for. All the pain you've been pushing through. And you're finally able to get to that weight only to feel like you're gonna drop your bar.

​So frustrating. So frustrating. My name is Dr. Molly, and I'm with Your Goals Physical Therapy. I wanted to go over a few quick things to consider before you just give it up  because deadlifts are amazing. Don't let your grip strength be the reason that you're not getting to your goals, right?

There are so many things that you can do to help that. The first thing that you can do is consider the position of your grip. So for some people, they grab the bar with both hands this way or this way, but really you get a lot of additional strength from having an alternated grip and that can really help you pull that weight up. Some people have found a lot of relief by using straps.

So wrist straps,  just to give them that extra security and that helps them get over the initial fear that they're gonna drop. I'm gonna go a little bit more in detail about wrist wraps and a later video this month.  So stay, stay tuned for that. If you're looking for more information about wrist wraps and this video, I wanna talk about the relationship between your shoulder and your grip strength.


Have you been working so hard to improve your deadlifts? And you're finally able to lift that weight that you've been working for months only to not be able to hold onto the bar because you feel like your hand's just gonna let it go. How disappointing is that, all that work makes your legs stronger, all the lunges, all the knee extensions, all the squats, everything you’ve been working for. All the pain you've been pushing through. And you're finally able to get to that weight only to feel like you're gonna drop your bar.

So frustrating. So frustrating. My name is Dr. Molly, and I'm with Your Goals Physical Therapy. I wanted to go over a few quick things to consider before you just give it up <laugh> because deadlifts are amazing. Don't let your grip strength be the reason that you're not getting to your goals, right?

There are so many things that you can do to help that. The first thing that you can do is consider the position of your grip. So for some people, they grab the bar with both hands this way or this way, but really you get a lot of additional strength from having an alternated grip and that can really help you pull that weight up. Some people have found a lot of relief by using straps.

So wrist straps,  just to give them that extra security and that helps them get over the initial fear that they're gonna drop. I'm gonna go a little bit more in detail about wrist wraps and a later video this month.  So stay, stay tuned for that. If you're looking for more information about wrist wraps and this video, I wanna talk about the relationship between your shoulder and your grip strength.

So in specific thickly, I've had several people, it's been like a clump of people recently that have come in telling me that they just can't hold onto things with their left hand, as much as they can with their right, and ultimately they assumed it was because they were, you know, righthand. And so their left hand was just weak, that does play into it. I'm not trying to brush that off. But really what it was, we found the root cause was their left shoulder was not as stable as their right shoulder. And so when they were moving dynamically and trying to do their deadlift, the shoulder just wasn't able to stabilize as much as it needed to against the force that they were doing and their hand was working so hard.

It gave itself tendonitis. So I know that's a lot of information and a lot of nerdy words, but your grip strength might not just be because you're a right-handed person and your left hand's just weaker. There could be more at play, more things going on. And so you shouldn't let that grip strength limit your goals because with just a few things and a few tweaks and paying attention to just a couple of tips and changing their routine, they increased their grip strength very, very quickly because it wasn't an overt loss of strength.

It was just that things weren't able to be stable. And once that was clicked for them, they were off, back at their training program at a hundred percent with no limitations. Other than obviously leg soreness, because we are talking about deadlifting.

So if you are trying right now, push past your best weight with your deadlifts, and you just cannot hold onto that bar. And that is just the big thorn in your side. And it's very, very frustrating. There are so many things that you can be doing, and it's really hard to go onto the internet and find all these hand exercises and all these wrist exercises and shoulder exercises to do and diagnose yourself.

​It's just very difficult because you can't objectively see yourself, you can't objectively do that and see all the pieces that are moving together. So take that burden off yourself. And if you're just trying to get to your goal, and you want to get there as quick as possible with the least amount of pitfalls and having somebody in your corner to tell you exactly when you're kind of falling off the rails, then I think you should call me because I can help you with that. And we can get you back to deadlifting the way that you want without fear of hurting your hand, dropping the weight, or any other drama, cause you can do a lot of damage to yourself if you drop the weights when you're deadlifting.

So let's get you back to deadlift without any worries.

Looking for more information check out these blogs. 

shoulder-problems-slowing-you-down.html
​working-out-after-shoulder-bursitis.html
​why-is-my-shoulder-popping.html

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