Should Rowers Use Wrist Straps?
Archive post from 5/30/22
Should rowers use wrist straps? My answer is generally yes. Take that, Betteridge. Wrist straps are a type of grip aid designed to make it easier to hold onto objects like barbells and dumbbells. A ~$15 investment can improve rowers' hinge and back exercise training and spare your forearm muscles and blistered hands.
There are different opinions about wrist straps, especially when you branch out beyond the sport of rowing and into bodybuilding, Crossfit, powerlifting, physical therapy, general strength training, social media stars, and so on.
I write for rowers and coaches about rowing training and strength training for rowing. The thing about rowing is that we’re hard on our hands, wrists, and forearm muscles. This is an unavoidable part of our sport in a way that it isn’t for most other sports. We rack up a lot of training time to build aerobic endurance and technique under high levels of fatigue. Our hands are our connection to the erg or oar handle, so every stroke of every session requires not just the forearm and hand muscle actions to hold the handle, but also the motion of feathering when we’re rowing on the water. To make things more challenging, we’re almost always either sweating or cold during our training sessions, which can make it hard to hold and manipulate the handle, also potentially increasing the blistering of the fingers and palms.
These are not factors in most other sports, so I'm not very interested in what people from outside of rowing think about rowers using wrist straps. In my experience with rowers, wrist straps are often helpful to focus on the hinging or pulling exercise without influence from the forearms and hands. Wrist straps help us train the target muscles of the hips and back more directly, rather than limiting a hinge or pulling exercise to the weakest link of grip strength or blister pain tolerance.
If your blisters are in good shape, train hinge and pulling exercises with a double-overhand grip (for a two-handed exercise) or a normal grip (for a one-handed exercise) while you work-up in weight, until holding the weight becomes challenging. At this point, use the straps so that you can continue to challenge the hinge or pulling muscles without limitation from the grip. If your blisters are in bad shape, then tape or bandage up, use wrist straps as much as necessary to be able to strength train, and make sure you thoroughly wash yourself and wipe down equipment when you’re done.
Don’t use wrist straps on full Olympic lifts, pushing/pressing exercises, or in any other situation where you might need to be able to let go of the implement quickly for safety reasons. Don’t use straps as an excuse to get sloppy with your movement or alter your technique or range of motion just to squeeze out some extra reps or weight. This is user error, not a fault of the strap.
I like my wrist straps from Spud Inc. I bought a pair in 2009 or 2010 and am still using them today. My wife has a pair of their 1” straps, designed for those with smaller wrists. I have no relationship with or knowledge of Spud Inc. other than occasional purchase of their products. There are lots of strap brands out there in the $10-20 range, so find one that works for you and make sure it’s durable and in good shape before use. There are also products like “Active Hands” and “Haulin’ Hooks” offering even greater grip support, more popular in the adaptive rowing community.
Most wrist straps have a left/right orientation, and there’s a little bit of a technique to getting them onto the bar securely. Watch my new short demonstration video below on using straps with barbells, dumbbells, and the trap/hex bar.