What is the “Hook Grip” and what are its advantages?

Regardless of how long you have been training CrossFit, the “Hook Grip” is a barbell grip that you should not only know about, but also try to include in your workouts.

What exactly is the “Hook Grip”?
You probably haven’t even thought about how exactly you hold the barbell during training, but it’s actually good to know that there are several ways, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Open grip
With it, you leave your thumb on the same side as the rest of your fingers (or the so-called “Open grip”). This grip is very dangerous, because with it you don’t “grasp the barbell”, but you only hold it by one side. The chances of dropping the barbell or falling off the barbell are very high with this grip.

Classic grip – “locked grip”
The most popular way to grip the bar and lever, in which all fingers, except the thumb, go to one side, and the thumb “hugs” the lever on the other - this is a locked grip. With this grip, you feel stability and confidence when doing barbell exercises or pull-ups. It is also used in the mixed grip, which is used in the deadlift, in which one hand “looks” inward and the other outward.

But let's move on to what concerns us:

Hook Grip in functional training.
The “Hook Grip” grip was not invented by functional trainers, it comes from weightlifting and powerlifting, but it is a common grip in functional training because it provides security. It is a closed grip, in which the index, middle and, in the best case, ring finger “hug” the thumb, keeping it pressed against the bar. This way, the bar seems to be hooked with a “hook” (hence the name of the grip).

In addition to the security of this grip, it is symmetrical and thus our body does not have to compensate, as it does with the mixed grip, for example.
In which movements can it be used?

This grip is recommended for movements such as Clean, Snatch and Deadlift. As you may have noticed, these are the exercises in which we lower the bar, since its function is to make gravity difficult.

It is not recommended for jerks, bench presses or pull-ups, since this would not contribute to stability.

It is as good as it is uncomfortable :)

The “Hook Grip” is the safest grip, but also the most uncomfortable.

Settle in with this from the first minute, knowing that it will be uncomfortable and that it will take months to get used to it. After all, it’s an unnatural grip and you’ve probably never done it before.
To ease the transition, start by doing cleans, snatches and deadlifts with an empty bar. Lots of reps to get used to it and then gradually increase the weight. To make it more bearable, you can wrap your thumb with finger tape so that it doesn’t suffer as much when it’s in contact with the bar.

But trust us, the key ingredients are patience and the knowledge that this will be uncomfortable from day one and will continue to be so until day 42. That’s why you need to be consistent, but as we mentioned earlier, start gradually and carefully.

Practice the “Hook Grip” and over time you will notice that your lifts, especially with heavy loads (more than 70/75%), are much safer.

See you in the gym!