What Is Fat Gripz For?
Our quest to explain all of the oddities in the gym now focuses on Fat Gripz , heavy rubber handles, often blue, that can be wrapped around barbells and dumbbells. Their main purpose is to make it harder to hold the bar, which can be good.
(Fat Gripz is one popular brand, but it is often used as a name for an entire category of objects. There are several sizes of Fat Gripz, as well as other brands such as Alpha grips .)
They put additional stress on your gripping muscles.
The wide is harder to grasp than the narrow. If you are lifting a normal-sized barbell or dumbbell, your fingers wrap around it. But if you are lifting something larger, you need to squeeze it with your hand so that you can hold on. This requires the muscles in the arms and forearms to work harder.
Some bodybuilders like a thick grip for this reason, because they just need big and strong forearms. There are also barbells and dumbbells that are made with larger handles (such as axle barbells, often used in strength competitions), but are more difficult to find.
They can help you with heavy bar lift workouts.
There are trials and competitions where you may need to lift something with a thick handle. I once had a competition in which I knew I needed to make a 2 ” wide barbell. I didn’t have one, so I wore the blue Fat Gripz in my duffel bag and trained with them on regular barbells in my gym.
There are also competitions that exist specifically to test grip strength, and if you train for them, the Fat Gripz could be one of the tools you use. If you want to try it informally, r / griptraining is doing an online challenge right now to see who can lift the heaviest dumbbell with the thickest handle.