Interesting thing happened today after doing some dead lifts. Instead of gripping the bar, I held onto the bar loosely with my fingers, letting gravity hold the bar in place. The end of my finger tips turned white. Is the usual artifacts of lifting like this? It took 15 minutes for blood to seep back into fingers. They are still a little white. It was a very weird feeling to have rest of hand pumped with blood, but none in fingertips. Kind of like frostbite feeling.

Any thoughts? I thought gripping hard would do this, but I did exact the opposite with no grip. I did a warmup run before lifting at home. Now onto my body weight without! Fun stuff!!

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There are two things I can never do while deadlifting. 1) use hook grip' date=' and 2) sumo deadlift. I grip tight, with chalk.

Muscle Irradiation, it's the thing Gods are made of. Instead of a loose grip, you want to grip as tight as you can. This activates your forearms, lats, chest, everything you can to provide a solid, stable foundation and engages several muscle groups to start the pull. If you're loose, you're using more of your lower back, thus you're gonna end up screwing something up in the end, plus it elongates your biceps tendon, seen a lot of guys pull things by not staying tight. I'll try to explain my setup.

1) Step up to the bar, bar sits across the bottom of my toes if looking down, feel shoulder width apart, I pull conventional even though most big guys pull sumo.

2) Reach down, get a loose grip and slowly tighten everything up, legs straight.

3) Huge breath in, tighten grip and upper body, bend knees, look up and pull. I don't jerk anything, it's all smooth, once the lift is at the top, lock it out by throwing my hips forward, upper body with a slight backwards lean on heavier sets.

I think Dave Tate has some awesome deadlift set up videos, Jim Wendler will have a few as well on youtube for sure.[/quote']

Thanks Mark! This is really helpful and I will post back how this goes after applying the technique at my next one rep testing session on Tuesday.

Mark, BTB, Around, Tally and many others- I cannot begin to express my appreciation for you guys taking the time to consistently provide high quality information in the fitness forum with regards to lifting and supplementation. For guys that are newer to the fitness and bodybuilding scene, this information is invaluable. Being 6 months into this type of fitness, I consider myself a newbie. however, I am glad that every day is a new day to increase understanding about the body and the role that fitness and supplementation has on it.

Mark, BTB, Around, Tally and many others- I cannot begin to express my appreciation for you guys taking the time to consistently provide high quality information in the fitness forum with regards to lifting and supplementation. For guys that are newer to the fitness and bodybuilding scene, this information is invaluable. Being 6 months into this type of fitness, I consider myself a newbie. however, I am glad that every day is a new day to increase understanding about the body and the role that fitness and supplementation has on it.

Fid, no problem man. I know we're all like minded and enjoy sharing the knowledge we've gained throughout the years. That's one thing I do love about powerlifting. It's all about "me" on the platform, but in the gym when training, most of the guys will share their deepest insight to powerlifting and pretty much anything else you want with you, even sometimes things you'd never ever ever want to know about another man, ever, seriously.

If you want some entraining listening, with a lot of good information, check out the Just Big radio show on FTNS. Vincent Dizenzo is the host, he's an elite bench presser, and a beast. He's always got some awesome guests on there, Jim Wendler, Dave Tate to name a few.

Hook grip worked great today (trainer even showed it before I asked about it). I got a PR on my dead lift at 350 for 1 rep test today. Funny thing, it does not feel that heavy in my gluts or upper legs. My back strength is where I am holding back. Need to keep my weight way back along with the slight invert in back. Once I reached failure, no matter how much I visualized correct form, the execution of it sucked because my lower back did not want to support it. Oh and no white fingers. However, I got the usual delayed blood rush after lifting heavy 5-10 seconds following lift). It is quite interesting where it is almost like fainting, but in a good way.

Hook grip worked great today (trainer even showed it before I asked about it). I got a PR on my dead lift at 350 for 1 rep test today. Funny thing, it does not feel that heavy in my gluts or upper legs. My back strength is where I am holding back. Need to keep my weight way back along with the slight invert in back. Once I reached failure, no matter how much I visualized correct form, the execution of it sucked because my lower back did not want to support it. Oh and no white fingers. However, I got the usual delayed blood rush after lifting heavy 5-10 seconds following lift). It is quite interesting where it is almost like fainting, but in a good way.

Yay!

Awesome work Fid. Proud of you. Are you lifting with a belt? My lower back has always felt weak, anything after 405 and I have to go with a belt just for support and to keep everything tight in my stomach and back. Back extensions with either a 45lb plate, or if you wanna get crazy a barbell loaded with either 25lb plates, 35's, or 45's to do back extensions with will also help build up your lower back. Stiff leg deadlifts also helped me a ton develop back there. My lower back is still weak in my opinion, but that's my own fault for never pinpointing it. Put in some work to develop that lower back, and it'll make a world of difference man.

great advice and it all makes sense. I do not use a belt, but may need to now that my weight is increasing. I am going to put into practice the suggested strength exercises. My trainer is very precise about pointing out my weak point which is exactly what I need: constant tweaking. I like stiff legged dead lifts and the weight tends to be about 60% of regular dead lifts in order to not injure the hamstring.

You'll be tweaking things for the rest of your lifting career man. I log every single work out, going back in my log and looking at changes I've made, I tweak things probably about once a month. I'll either drop a movement or add one to my overall sets depending on how I'm feeling, what's working, what isn't working, etc. To me, my biceps and lower back suck, so every day I do something for biceps and lower back, high reps low weight, every day I'm in the gym, even if just enough to get blood pumping through and some minor fiber tears to get repaired, work is work. I love the science of building up a body part and hitting it hard, then watching it grow. If you're anything like me, the more you develop something the harder you're going to work it. The future is awesome when it comes to just how far we can push our bodies.