Choosing Event-Specific Grip Without Sacrificing Your Pulling Strength

You're training for a strongman show. The events list includes an axle deadlift, a farmer's walk, and maybe a barbell row for reps. So you begin adding grip-specific labor—thick bar holds, pinch blocks, heavy carries. But soon your conventional deadlift feels off. Your hook grip slips. Your mixed grip starts twisting your biceps. The question isn't whether grip training matters. It's how to pick the sound grip tools for each event without losing the raw pulled strength you've built over years.

This article walks you through the decision process: who needs to choose, what your options are, how to compare them, the trade-offs, the implementation, the risks, and a final no-hype take. No fake experts, no guaranteed programs. Just a framework that's worked for real competitors.

Who Must Choose — And By When

The novice vs. experienced lifter timeline

You don't require to choose today. That's the good news. If you're under two years of serious strongman training, your grip is still plastic—malleable, improving fast, not yet locked into bad habits. I have seen novices waste six months obsessing over hook grip technique while their deadlift stalled at 180 kg. faulty sequence. The novice timeline is basic: construct raw hand strength opening, specialize later. Wait until you can double-overhand 80% of your max pull. That baseline tells you your grip is competent, not just surviving. Experienced lifters face a different clock. If you have been pull with strap for three seasons, your thumbs have forgotten how to effort. That's a hard reset, not a subtle tweak. And it takes longer than you think—four to six weeks of dedicated thumb effort before the groove feels natural. The catch: most experienced lifters wait until eight weeks out from a show to switch. That's too late.

Competition calendar pressure

Mark your show date opening, then effort backward. A rough rule I use: four weeks minimum to embed a new grip method without losing pull strength. Six weeks is safer. So if your contest is twelve weeks out, you have room to experiment with two options. If you're inside eight weeks, pick one—the one that matches your main event—and commit. The worst scenario? Switching grips three weeks before comp day. Your pull feels foreign, your CNS doesn't trust the hold, and you end up pulled four kilos less than your training max. That hurts. Competition calendar pressure forces a real decision: what can you genuinely own by show day, not what feels theoretically best. Most units skip this timeline check. They pick a grip because a pro used it, then scramble when the seam blows out mid-prep. Don't be that athlete.

Your current grip baseline

Be honest here. Can you hold 90% of your deadlift for a five-second static hold with your chosen grip method? If not, your grip fails the opening probe. The tricky bit is that strongman events punish grip endurance, not just peak force. A farmer's walk, a heavy frame carry, a double deadlift for reps—these orders sustained tension, not a one-off explosive pull. I have coached guys who switched to hook grip for deadlift but discovered in week eight that their thumbs couldn't survive four consecutive heavy reps. That's a pitfall you can catch early with one straightforward drill: trial your chosen grip over a five-rep set at 85%, not a solo max. If the hold degrades by rep four, your baseline is too weak. You call more phase or a different method. One rhetorical question worth asking yourself: would you bet your competition result on your current grip proper now? If you paused even a second, you know the answer.

'The grip you choose twelve weeks out is rarely the grip you should use on game day — unless you spent those twelve weeks training the grip, not just pulled through it.'

— observation from coaching, not a statistic

Your Options: Mixed Grip, Hook Grip, strap, or Hooks

Mixed Grip — Speed, Risk, and the Bicep Tax

Mixed grip is the default for most deadlifters who are not yet competing in strongman. One palm faces you, one faces away — the bar can’t roll out easily, and you pull more weight on day one. That sounds like a win. The catch is what happens to your supinated arm. That forearm rotates outward under load, the biceps tendon takes tension it wasn’t designed for, and in strongman — where you sometimes pull from a deficit or with an axle — the risk of a distal biceps rupture spikes. I have seen four athlete tear that tendon in the last two years. Every one-off one was using mixed grip on a thick bar. The trade-off is plain: mixed grip gives you immediate pull strength on standard barbells, but it teaches your nervous setup to rely on forearm rotation rather than pure finger flexion. When you move to a log or an axle, that rotation advantage disappears and the bicep hazard stays. Not worth it for a dedicated strongman athlete.

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Hook Grip — Carries Straight Into Strongman If You Can Tolerate It

Hook grip sandwiches the thumb between the bar and your fingers. It preserves bilateral symmetry — both palms face you — so your pull stays square and the bicep risk vanishes. The downside is real: the initial 4–6 weeks hurt. Thumbs get bruised, nail beds ache, and you will question your life choices during warm-ups. But here is what matters — hook grip transfers directly to smooth barbells, deadlift bars, and even some axle pulls if your thumb length cooperates. The odd part is that most athlete who switch to hook for strongman find their deadlift numbers stay the same or creep up after two months, because they stop compensating for the mixed-grip asymmetry. Biggest pitfall: hook grip is useless on a slippery, wet, or oversized install. Farmers handles? No. Stone loading? No. You require strap or hooks for those events. But for the deadlift portion of a contest — especially if it’s a standard bar — hook grip is the closest you get to pure pulled strength without equipment dependency.

Pick one: mixed grip for short-term wins or hook grip for competition longevity. Most coaches get this off by recommending hook grip to everyone.

‘Hook grip doesn’t fix your grip — it stops your grip from breaking while you fix everything else.’

— longtime strongman coach, after watching an athlete pull 600 lbs on an axle with strap after three months of hook-grip only deadlifting.

strap and Hooks — When They assist and When They Break the Chain

strap (figure-8 or standard loop) transfer the load from your fingers to your wrist and forearm. They let you hold onto a heavy axle or a loaded barbell even when your grip is fried from truck pull or farmer’s holds. That sounds perfect. The trap is that strap can become a crutch. I have watched athlete pull 50 lbs more with strap than with bare hands on the same bar, then bomb a contest because the deadlift started with strap in the rules. Hooks (metal or composite lifting hooks) go further — they bypass the hand entirely and hang the load from the wrist. They're fantastic for max deadlift attempts on thick bars, but they wreck your ability to form actual grip endurance. What usually breaks initial is not the hand. It’s the mental habit: you stop gripping hard because the hook or strap does the task. Then the stone loading event arrives, and you can't pinch a 300-lb stone because your thumbs forgot how to effort. The real choice is not “strap or no strap.” The choice is: will you discipline raw grip enough to retain your hands competent while using mechanical help for the one or two events that require it?

Here is the blunt version. If your main event is a standard deadlift — use hook or mixed. If your main event is an axle deadlift for reps — use figure-8 strap. If your main event is a frame carry or max deadlift with no rules — use hooks. But if you pick hooks for everything, your thumbs atrophy. That's not a theory. That's what happens inside three months of exclusive hook training. Rotate your grip choices across training blocks. Don't let one fixture erase your raw hand strength.

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Puffin driftwood caches stay damp.

Puffin driftwood caches stay damp.

How to Compare Grip Choices: The Real Criteria

Transferability to event implements

The opening real filter is brutally basic: does the grip you train with actually show up on contest day? A figure-eight strap that feels amazing on a stiff deadlift bar can turn into a liability on a slippery axle or a rotating circus dumbbell handle. I have watched strongmen crush a 700-lb deadlift in training with mixed grip, only to watch the supinated arm curl open on the second rep of a max-rep axle pull. That's not a grip failure — it's a transfer failure. The odd part is — most athletes test grip strength in isolation but never check whether their chosen method carries over to the install’s diameter, knurling, or rotation. The metric? Ask yourself: if you swapped the bar for the exact contest deploy tomorrow, would your grip method still lock in the same way? If you hesitate, the transfer gap is already too wide.

Fatigue overhead on CNS and hands

Mixed grip spares your central nervous framework — that's why it feels easy. But it shreds your bicep tendon on the supinated side, especially under high volume or fatigue. Hook grip saves the tendon but demands that your thumbs survive the abuse — and for many athletes, the pain ceiling arrives before the strength ceiling. strap and hooks offload the fingers almost entirely, which sounds like relief until you realize your hands stop adapting. The catch is — if you use strap for every deadlift variation, your raw grip detrains fast. I have seen a lifter drop a 400-lb frame carry in week 8 of a prep because his fingers had not been forced to crush anything heavy since week 2. The CNS recovers in days. Soft tissue adaptation takes weeks. Pick a method that lets your hands stay in the fight without burning out your nervous framework before the event starts.

‘A grip that protects your thumbs but destroys your pull timing is just a different kind of loss.’

— overheard at a mock contest, after a 12-inch log failed three inches off the floor

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Injury risk and long-term viability

Here is the trade-off that nobody talks about in the warmup room: mixed grip is the fastest way to snap a bicep in a strongman deadlift event. The supinated arm is mechanically vulnerable once fatigue sets in and the bar drifts forward. Hook grip is safer for the elbow but brutal on the thumb joints — and that damage is cumulative, not acute. strap shift the load to your wrist and forearm flexors; if your technique is sloppy, you develop chronic wrist pain before you ever pull a true max. Hooks remove the wrist from the equation entirely but lock your hand into one position — if the apply rotates or shifts mid-pull, you can't adjust. faulty sequence. Not yet. You orders to project where your body will be in two years, not just what your deadlift max looks like this month. The viable choice is the one you can still use after five competitions, not the one that feels safest in week one.

Trade-Offs Table: Grip Method vs. pullion Strength

Conventional Deadlift: Which Grip Preserves Strength?

On a standard bar, double-overhand grip usually fails opening — around 150–180 kg your hands open before your back does. Switch to mixed grip (one palm supinated) and your pull stays smooth; no grip fatigue, full power transfer. The trade-off? That supinated arm sits in a slightly compromised bicep position. I have seen guys rip a distal bicep tendon switching from strap to mixed at the last minute — that spend you pulled strength for six months. Hook grip solves the bicep risk but introduces thumb pain; some athletes lose focus because the burn distracts them from the actual hip drive. strap remove all grip strain but add roughly 15–20 millimeters of slack from the bar-to-hand distance — a tiny loss, yet it can lower your initial-pull speed off the floor. The catch is that speed loss matters more for a deadlift-primary event than for an axle or farmer's medley. faulty pick here: you may pull the same weight but stall 2 cm off the floor because your set-up angle changed.

Axle Deadlift and Thick Bar: Grip vs. Stroke

An axle forces your hand to close around a thicker diameter — roughly 2 inches vs. the standard 28 mm. Your fingers can't overlap the same way. Mixed grip on an axle often twists the bar because the supinated hand fights the pronated hand across a wider surface; that twist bleeds energy into stabilizing the wrist rather than lifting the weight. Hooks labor well here — the thumb wraps under fingers, locking the bar into a shallow death-grip — but the pain is brutal. What usually breaks primary is not the hand but the mental tolerance: athletes skip their final rep because the thumb feels crushed. strap on an axle? Effective but you lose stroke length — the strap winds around the bar, shortening your range of motion by maybe 1 cm. That sounds fine until the judge calls a soft lockout because your hips didn't fully extend. One strongman I coached tried switching from mixed to hook grip two weeks before a contest. His pullion strength dropped 8% because his nervous framework had to recalibrate the hand-arm connection. Not enough window. The only method that preserves both grip and full ROM on axle is figure-eight strap — they lock without winding — but they force you to release the bar fast in a medley, which expenses transition window.

“The strongest grip in the gym means nothing if your pull breaks down in the third event because you chose a method that fatigues the forearm before the hips.”

— overheard at a regional strongman clinic, 2023

Farmer’s Walk and Carries: Endurance vs. Grip Fatigue

strap on farmer’s walks seem logical — more weight, longer distance. But farmers require a dynamic grip; you require to re-cinch your hand mid-stride if the apply shifts. strap lock that ability out. faulty queue: you wrap tight, the handle rotates slightly, and suddenly you're carrying the implement with your fingertips still wrapped in nylon — grip strength gone, forearm screaming. Hooks for carries? Impractical for long distances — thumb pain peaks around 20 meters and then your hand opens involuntarily. Mixed grip on farmers is a non-starter because the asymmetrical loading twists your torso as you walk; I have seen athletes veer off course by 2 meters in a straight-line event. The better trade-off here is figure-eight strap with a quick-release routine — or go raw double-overhand with lighter loads and focus on hand speed at the turn. The pitfall is overthinking: you can condition the hands to tolerate 80% of your bodyweight per hand over 50 meters if you spend 12 weeks on dedicated grip volume. Most athletes skip that and lose the event by one meter because their fingers peeled open at the final turn. That hurts—and it's entirely avoidable by matching grip method to the carry duration, not to the deadlift max.

Implementation: How to Phase In Event-Specific Grip labor

Off-season vs. peak week periodization

The biggest mistake I see is treating grip labor like a permanent add-on—throw hooks and strap at every deadlift session, then wonder why your raw pull feels hollow. You can't construct event-specific grip capacity while peaking for a contest. Plain flawed batch. In the off-season, run a dedicated 6–8 week block where you pull exclusively with the grip method your main event demands—say, hook grip for axle deadlift. Your conventional deadlift numbers will dip; that's fine. The catch is that you must drop pullion volume by 15–20% during this block to avoid cumulative forearm fatigue. Most units skip this: they hold pull heavy conventional pulls twice a week while adding three grip drills, then complain when their lockout stalls. Cut the ego. Off-season is for tissue adaptation. Peak week flips the logic—strip all grip-specific drilling 10 days out, revert to strap and hooks on heavy pulls, and let the CNS recover. That sounds plain until athletes cling to their new hook grip out of paranoia and crush their hand strength correct before show day.

Daily undulating grip labor without overtraining

You can train grip every day—provided you vary intensity like a lunatic. Monday: heavy farmer's walks at 90% effort, no straps, short duration. Tuesday: light high-rep pinch effort, just blood flow. Wednesday: deadlift day with hook grip only, but capped at 75% of your max. Thursday: active recovery—rice bucket, wrist extensions, zero loading. Friday: max-effort axle clean and press, mixed grip allowed, but no additional grip accessories. The block is load, flush, load, rest. I have seen athletes run this model for 12 weeks straight without grip degradation; the ones who fail are the ones who treat Wednesday like a max-out day and still do 20 rep sets on Friday. One rhetorical question: how often does your low back dictate your pull volume? Exactly. Apply the same logic to the hands. What usually breaks initial is the lumbrical muscles—tiny but vengeful. We fixed this by inserting one completely grip-free deadlift session every 10 days: straps on, no hooks, no chalk, just pullion. That lone session resets the connective tissue without stealing strength gains.

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Letterpress quoins reward gradual hands.

Sample week: balancing conventional pulls and grip-specific drills

Here is a concrete week from a 315-kg deadlifter who needs hook grip for his main event but refuses to let his conventional pull slide below 290.

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• Monday: conventional deadlift (straps), 5×3 at 85%, followed by 3 rounds of light two-hand pinch holds—under 60 seconds per round.
• Wednesday: axle clean and press (hook grip), 4×3 at 70%, plus 2 heavy one-off-leg farmer carries per arm—these crush the grip without beating up the spine.
• Friday: deadlift variation—deficit or block pulls—no grip choice allowed; use the method you scheme to contest with. Volume stays at 3×4, no closer than RPE 8.
• Saturday: active recovery—rice bucket rotations, wrist curls with a 5-kg dumbbell, and that infamous straps-only deadlift session (3×8 at 65%) to flush the hands.

The odd part is—there is no pure grip-only day. You weave it into pulls and carries. If you add a standalone grip day, you risk forearm tendinosis inside three weeks. One concrete anecdote: a strongman I coached tried a four-day split with dedicated grip Tuesdays; by week five his hook grip slipped on a 300-kg axle because the interosseous membrane was fried. We collapsed the grip effort into the existing pullion days and his numbers rebounded in 10 days. That's the implementation trap—more volume never fixes poor timing.

“You can't out-train bad periodization. The hands call the same deload rhythm as your hips.”

— programming note from a coach who watched a 650-lb pull vanish because the lifter refused to rest his thumbs

What happens when you rush the phase-in

The typical timeline: 8 weeks of dedicated grip adaptation if you switch methods, 4 weeks if you're adding a secondary option (e.g., mixed grip for stone loading while keeping straps for pulls). If you try to compress that into 14 days, two things break. primary, the callus tears—usually on the ring finger, bloody, takes 5 days to heal. Second, the CNS adapts to the new grip demand by downgrading motor unit recruitment on your conventional pull. You lose 5–10 kg off your top solo within two sessions. Most athletes blame the grip method, but the culprit is the sudden dose. The fix is boring: begin with one grip-specific session per week, add a second after three weeks, and never exceed three weekly events until you have run a full mesocycle. That feels gradual. It works. I have watched lifters drop 20 kg on their deadlift chasing a hook grip in six weeks; the smart ones take the long route and end up 10 kg ahead by contest day. Your next action: grab your training log, count how many grip-specific sessions you ran last month, and if the number exceeds your deadlift sessions, stop. Restructure. The hands are not special—they just bleed faster than your spinal erectors.

What Happens If You Choose off — Or Skip Steps

Tendonitis and Overuse Injuries

Pick the faulty grip too fast and your elbows will scream opening. I have watched strongmen jump from mixed grip to hook grip overnight for the axle clean — two weeks later they can't press a log without flinching. The proximal biceps tendon takes the hit. The odd part is — the grip itself felt fine during pulls. But the new position torqued the forearm flexors in a way your body never prepared for. That subtle tendon strain doesn't announce itself with a pop. It builds as a dull ache after deadlift volume, then shows up during pressing, then ruins a show.

What usually breaks opening is the connective tissue at the elbow, not the hand. You fix the grip but lose the press. faulty queue. If you skip the phasing steps outlined earlier — doing all your deadlifts in straps one week and all your axle labor with hook grip the next — the connective tissues never adapt. They fatigue, then fray. The result is months of rehab for what felt like a smart shortcut.

“I spent a full prep afraid to hook grip because of one bad elbow — and then lost the deadlift event anyway.”

— former national-level heavyweight, after rushing a grip switch six weeks out

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CNS Burn-Out and Plateau

The grip method changes how your nervous framework loads the bar. Mixed grip allows you to pull more weight because the body senses spinal stability. Hook grip triggers a pain response that dampens force output — you pull less, grind more, and the central nervous stack accumulates fatigue faster. If you choose hook grip for your main deadlift event but maintain using it for every accessory row and shrug, you're not building pull strength. You're draining it.

Most crews skip this: a CNS burn-out from grip mismatch looks exactly like an overtraining plateau. Weights feel heavy. Speed drops. Recovery drags. The natural instinct is to push harder, add volume, or switch programs. But the real culprit is a grip method that costs more neurological energy than the gain it provides. I have seen athletes spin their wheels for eight weeks — no progress, just ache — because they picked hook grip for events and refused to use straps for the volume effort. The fix was basic: straps for back-off sets, hook grip for peak singles. Recovery returned in ten days.

The catch is — you can't feel this happening. CNS burn-out doesn't hurt like a tendon. It just quietly kills your top end.

Competition Day Failure

Choosing off on grip often doesn't punish you in training. It waits. The difference between a normal gym session and a contest floor — slick bars, adrenaline shakes, sweat-slicked hands — exposes any grip weakness you hid behind volume or cold conditions. I have watched a strongman rip 700 pounds easily with mixed grip in the warm-up room, then blow the rep two minutes later because the bar rotated from sweat under the knurling. His mixed grip was strong. The conditions were not.

That's the real risk: you optimize for pulling strength in a dry, chalked, rested environment, but the event demands a grip method that works when everything else fails. If you skipped the implementation steps — if you never did fatigued sets with your event-specific grip — you don't know how it behaves under pressure. The seam blows out in the middle of the deadlift ladder, not during prep. And you only get one shot that day.

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faulty choice? You lose a rep. Skipped steps? You lose the whole event. Choose based on your main event conditions, not your gym numbers.

Mini-FAQ: Grip Choices and Pulling Strength

Can I use straps for every pulling movement?

No — and if you do, your grip strength will drop faster than a misloaded axle. Straps mask weakness. They let you hold 700 pounds when your raw grip can barely lock 500. That sounds fine until you hit a max-attempt deadlift in competition and straps are banned. The catch is this: straps are a training tool, not a permanent crutch. I have seen strongmen rip 600 off the floor with straps all prep cycle, then miss 550 on contest day because their hands gave out. Use straps for heavy volume effort, but hold raw pulling in your warm-ups or back-off sets. Otherwise you train the lats and leave the hands behind.

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How often should I train without straps?

Every session — at least for the opening few reps. The plain rule: pull your opening 3–5 reps of every deadlift, axle, or trap bar set without straps. Then strap up for the heavy effort. This preserves your hand conditioning without trashing your total volume. The tricky bit is consistency. Skip this for two weeks and your skin softens, your grip endurance fades. It's not about max-effort grip training every day — it's about maintaining what you already built. One concrete tip I give athletes: do your last warm-up set without straps, even if it's 80 percent. That solo set per session adds up.

Does hook grip task for axle deadlift?

Rarely — and usually not well. The axle is thicker than a standard barbell. Hook grip relies on wrapping your thumb under two fingers and crushing it against the bar. On a 2-inch diameter axle, that thumb wrap creates a gap. Your fingers can't fully close. The result? The bar slips, the thumbnail takes hellish pressure, and you lose the lift. What usually breaks opening is the thumb — either the joint or the nail bed. I've coached maybe three guys who could hook an axle over 500 pounds. The rest switched to mixed grip or straps and pulled more immediately. Save hook grip for the barbell deadlift. For axle, it's a losing bet.

Will switching grips reduce my max deadlift?

Short term? Yes. Long term? Only if you pick faulty.

— coaching note, Hoplyfx prep log

Switching from mixed grip to hook or from straps to raw will drop your numbers for 3–6 weeks. That's adaptation — not regression. Your central nervous system reads the new hand position as foreign: different tension, different torque, different failure point. The hazard is panicking. Lifters swap grip two weeks before a contest, lose 30 pounds on their pull, then scramble back to the old method. Wrong order. Phase in grip changes during your off-season or early block. If your main event is a thick-bar deadlift, you sacrifice pulling strength now to build it later. That's not a trade-off — that's a deliberate investment.

No-Hype Recommendation: Pick Based on Your Main Event

For axle-dominant comps: invest in hook grip and thick bar effort

If your main event is an axle clean-and-press or axle deadlift, you face a specific problem: the diameter punishes your fingers fast. Mixed grip on an axle often rotates the bar out of your palm — the smooth surface betrays your thumb side. Hook grip solves that, but only if you have already built tolerance. I have seen athletes show up six weeks out, try hook grip on an axle for the opening time, and tear the thumbnail loose on rep three. That hurts — and it wastes a training cycle. The trade-off: hook grip pulls your deadlift numbers down 3–5% during the adaptation phase. But if the comp is axle-heavy, you must eat that loss early. open with partial-range thick-bar holds twice per week, then layer in hook grip on your last deadlift set only. The seam between your thumb and index finger will swell; ice it. No shortcut here.

What about straps on an axle? They bunch up under load and shift the bar into your fingertips — not a grip failure, but a stability failure that bleeds pull-through power. The odd part is that many athletes choose straps because hook grip hurts. Fair. But the real cost is hidden: straps delay the callus tear, then it happens mid-comp anyway. If you're deadlifting an axle for reps, hook grip plus knurling tape on the thumb is the less-bad option. We fixed this for one athlete by having him do alternate sets of hook grip and barehanded axle holds in the same session — brutal, but his pull felt stronger by week eight.

For farmer's walk heavy comps: prioritize mixed grip endurance

Farmer's walk events punish grip endurance more than max load. The bar is usually a standard diameter, so you can use mixed grip and survive the first thirty meters. The catch is muscular endurance: your flexors fatigue fast if your mixed grip is only practiced on deadlifts with rest between reps. I recommend timed holds at 80–90% of your farmer's walk contest weight — but with a twist. Hold for fifteen seconds, drop, reset and hold again immediately, no rest. That mimics the real failure pattern. Most teams skip this and wonder why their grip gives out at forty meters. The pitfall: overtraining mixed grip can inflame the biceps tendon on the supinated side. Alternate your pronated/supinated arm assignment every session to spread the stress.

Skipping grip endurance labor entirely is a bigger mistake. If your comp has a long farmer's walk and a deadlift event in the same day, don't save your grip on deadlifts. Use straps for all deadlift pulls except the heaviest one-off, then do your farmer's walk discipline right after. That forces your grip to labor when it's already partially fatigued — the exact scenario contest day creates.

“I switched to mixed grip only for farmers and hook grip for deadlifts. My pull numbers stayed the same, but I stopped dropping implements at thirty-five meters.”

— amateur strongman, two years of competition, seen in a coaching log

For mixed events: cycle grip methods across training phases

Most strongman contests are not single-event specialists — you press an axle, then pull a bar deadlift, then walk with frames. Cycling grip methods across a twelve-week prep is the honest approach. Phase one: straps on everything to accumulate deadlift volume without grip limiting your back work. Phase two: introduce hook grip on your heavy deadlift singles, keep straps on volume sets, and practice mixed grip on loaded carries. Phase three: four weeks out, remove straps during event-specific sessions entirely. That last phase hurts. Your deadlift numbers may drop five to eight kilos as your grip catches up. The recommendation is simple: accept that drop now rather than on contest day when you have no backup plan. Don't start the cycle too late — eight weeks minimum. One athlete tried it in four weeks: his hook grip blistered badly, he switched back to straps, then dropped the bar on his final deadlift at the comp because he had no grip left for the last rep.