When I moved from Dallas to Georgia and began training with Caleb Williams I noticed something really interesting. He never uses straps. Never. And when I say never I mean he does not use them for pulls or hangs or anything. Caleb most recently completed a three stop clean pull in upwards of 170 kg without straps. He just doesn’t use them. His best snatch in training headed into Nationals was 127. His best clean and jerk in training was 166. He blew both of those numbers out of the water with a 130 snatch and 174 clean and jerk. Again, Caleb likely has 1000 other variables that go into his extremely successful performance but I guarantee you that a lack of usage of straps was a part of that success. Every lift he’s ever done feels exactly the same in his hands as it does on competition day. Caleb does this for two specific reasons. He has extremely small hands and extremely chubby/sausagelike fingers. Grip strength is important. Secondly he wants all of his lifts to be the same. And for that reason he practices the same way he would compete.
After Nationals, I began training without straps alongside Caleb. What I noticed was two things. Every single pull I have a completed felt like it weighed 100 kg more than it actually did and I couldn’t get anywhere close to the numbers I had been used to hitting while wearing straps. A great example is my snatch from the blocks at the bottom of the knee. I have always, for some reason, worn straps for this movement. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post my best from the blocks is 130 kg. To date I have not been able to snatch more than 110 without the use of straps. That’s a 20 kg swing! Furthermore, trying to complete complexes with pauses built-in or movements from the hang have revealed an extreme reliance on the connectedness I gain when strapped to the bar. I gave Caleb’s philosophy a 5 week trial run. The results were simple. My numbers dropped significantly, my hands were always swollen and beat up, grabbing the bar was often the hardest part of the left, and I began to form an extreme disdain for the use of the straps in my training.
After the five week experiment was concluded, I began to add straps back in and different ways testing and attempting their usage to see where I could use them and they not hinder or inflate my training members. Before I give you my newly formed opinion on the uses of straps based on this testing, it is important that we address some of the other views on straps out there and their specific extremes. More on that tomorrow…