The truth about weightlifting belts, pulling aids and weightlifting shoes - harmful accessories or essential aids?

Tools or crutches?

What's the deal with weightlifting belts, pulling aids and special weightlifting shoes for Olympic weightlifting? Are they good tools or do they do more harm than good? Many trainers who promote "functional training" will tell you that you should do without all these tools. Many strength coaches, on the other hand, will tell you that these tools are a necessity. Which is true? Unfortunately, there is no simple, one-size-fits-all answer to this question.

1 - Pulling aids

Pulling aids are associated with a weak grip by many hardcore strength athletes. Not using pulling aids during basic exercises such as deadlifts, rows and lat pulldowns can be good for building strength in the hands and forearms, but there are also strategic applications where pulling aids are ideal.

Pulling aids should primarily be used when grip strength is the limiting factor, or when performing exercises to create a stronger mind-muscle connection in specific muscles. Here is an overview of the situations in which you should use pulling aids and other situations in which you should avoid using pulling aids.

When it makes sense to use pulling aids

To make progress in the gym, you need a constant, long-term overload. But as you approach your full physical potential, more obvious weak links in the chain will show up in training - and this will make it harder to keep increasing the weights on the big heavy basic exercises.

The use of grip aids on supra-maximal loads can be beneficial as this can prevent you from being limited by your grip strength and allow you to overload other muscles of the body.

The muscles of the hands, wrists and forearms are dominated by slow contracting muscle fibers, meaning that these muscles are designed to withstand long periods of tension. Your grip is designed for endurance, but there are times during an advanced workout when the total time under tension can be limited by your grip.

In more advanced bodybuilding programs that involve high intensity training, as is the case with extended descending sets, partial reps and isometric holds, your grip should not be the limiting factor if you really want to reap the benefits of extended sets and chasing the pump.

For pulling exercises that use intensity techniques, grip aids are a preferred tool to maximize the challenge of each set. You can also use grip aids in isolation exercises to emphasize the muscle actions of the back, shoulders or even the lower body.

If we use lat pulldowns as an example, then the primary muscle engaged should be the latissimus. In many cases, forearms and biceps can take tension off the latissimus and make it extremely difficult to elicit strong, quality muscle contraction.

However, by using grip aids, the grip can relax while also reducing the involvement of the biceps, shifting the load more directly to the latissimus. This principle can also be applied to deadlifts with higher repetitions with an emphasis on the back, direct shoulder training such as side raises and even lower body exercises such as lunges with heavy dumbbells.

When you should NOT use grip aids

If you are new to strength training, you should refrain from using grip aids. During this phase, you will improve your motor skills and learn to achieve full-body tension. Avoiding grip aids completely for the first year or two will help you to strengthen your joints and avoid unnecessary shoulder, elbow and spinal pain.

Train with your bare hands and improve the transmitting effects that transfer force from the hands to the kinetic chain. Sure, such an approach will limit the amount of weight you can move, but this is a good thing if you are just starting to develop movement patterns.

What about more advanced exercisers? Even if you have earned the right to train heavy, the use of grip aids is a double-edged sword. You should therefore use grip aids carefully.

Sure, grip aids will allow you to move heavier weights - which is especially true if your fingertips are the weakest link in the chain, but even experienced strength athletes should use grip aids sparingly and only use them occasionally during heavy sets. All warm-up sets and sets where you gradually increase the weight should be performed with bare hands and the vast majority of supportive pulling exercises should also be performed without grip aids.

Finally, remember that if your bicep strength is a weak link in the chain, training without grip aids will help to increase this strength. When your grip and forearms are emphasized more during a bare-handed workout, your biceps will also be recruited at a higher rate. Although this is a great thing for more advanced exercisers to bring these problem areas up to par with the rest of the body, it can be challenging when your grip and biceps take over during pull-based exercises. Use grip aids wisely when this happens.

2 - Weightlifting belt

This is the most abused and misused accessory of all. As polarizing as the topic of core strength and back pain is, this tool is at the center of a hotly debated question:

"Will continuous use of a weightlifting belt weaken your core?"

The true answer is almost always somewhere in the middle between polarizing views. And in this case, it depends heavily on the individual exerciser and their technique.

When it makes sense to use a weightlifting belt

Everyone wants specific numbers when it comes to using a weightlifting belt for the big heavy basic exercises. Should you start using a weightlifting belt as soon as you reach 200 kilos in deadlifting? Or should you use it whenever you plan to move 90% of your maximum weight?

However, since every exerciser has an individual body type, individual goals and an individual history of training experience and injuries, there is no strict rule for using a weightlifting belt for squats and deadlifts. The best indicator is a combination of the number of years of training experience in the basic heavy exercises and the ability to generate a hard and stable support through the shoulders, hips and core.

Serious strength training that consists of periodized barbell exercises for two years or more is the training age at which an exerciser can potentially achieve success using a weightlifting belt. If this seems like a long time, then you have not been training long enough. It takes years, if not decades, to develop proper supportive technique in the basic exercises. It is a continuous process. But this leads me to the next basic requirement for successful training with the support of a weightlifting belt: sufficient endogenous support function.

This refers to the ability to generate maximum torque in the joint head based hip and shoulder joints in conjunction with 360 degrees of active expansion through the torso, core and chest. This is a prerequisite for introducing a weightlifting belt into the training equation.

Losses of strength or tension that occur in exercisers who have not yet mastered this basic tension and stabilization can actually be exacerbated by the use of a weightlifting belt. Just as we don't add weight to a faulty basic movement pattern, we shouldn't add an external stabilizing component to a faulty support and tension mechanism.

Once you've mastered the ability to build such basic supportive tension and have decided to use a weightlifting belt strategically, the next question is when to use it for maximum benefit.

A vast majority of barbell athletes and recreational athletes will be successful with the use of a weightlifting belt on working sets (not warm-up sets) of squats and hip flexion exercises and variations thereof. So if you are at the upper end of load or relative intensity for these two movement patterns, you can use a weightlifting belt to increase your performance and maximize support function.

When you should NOT use a weightlifting belt

Most exercisers who use a weightlifting belt have no idea what it's for or how to use it. It's just another trend among idiots who strap a weightlifting belt around their midsection before hurting their lower back right after.

If you are a beginner or suffer from a lower back problem, then you should make sure you know how to properly stabilize your core and maintain adequate tension in this area. Your lack of basic core stability could be the reason why you are constantly experiencing back problems - with or without a weightlifting belt.

The weightlifting belt is an advanced training tool for advanced athletes who have earned the right to use this tool as part of their training to improve stability during heavy basic exercises. A weightlifting belt is not a fashion accessory!

It should not be put on in the changing room before training and only taken off again before showering. And a weightlifting belt should certainly not give you the confidence or false sense of security that it will protect you from injury. A 6 mm thick piece of leather cannot compensate for poor exercise execution and was not designed to do so.

Even for experienced exercisers, there are times when training completely without equipment is the preferred method. If an exercise targets core strength, then you should not use a belt. For upper body exercises such as pushes and pulls, as well as single-leg lower body exercises such as lunges and split squats, you should train without a belt. And it shouldn't need to be mentioned (although I've seen the hell out of it) that you should take your belt off when doing cardio or arm workouts.

Reducing your reliance on a weightlifting belt will enable you to generate a more authentic and functional full body tension in all your exercises and will teach you to appreciate what it means to generate internal tension through muscle, fascia and soft tissue connections of your body that you have control over.

As we always say with our powerlifters training with supports, the stronger you are without support, the stronger you will be when you use that support again.

3 - Shoes for Olympic weightlifting

These shoes were originally developed for the sport of Olympic weightlifting. By reinforcing the heel of the shoes in conjunction with a stiff and flat sole, these shoes are able to maximize ground reaction force while helping the ankles, knees, hips and spine to explosively move a weight up from the ground.

But over the years, these shoes have become a common crutch among athletes who have no aspirations of ever competing in weightlifting. Here is a brief overview of who should use these shoes and who should avoid them.

When to use weightlifting shoes

Use these shoes when performing Olympic weightlifting exercises during a competition. However, it would be short-sighted to think that better performance on the competition stage correlates directly with long-term orthopaedic health and function of the body.

At a high level of competitive sport, there is always a give and take for every training variable implemented during training and competition. And if your goal is to stride onto the competition stage and move maximum weight from the ground to an overhead position - and increased plantar flexion, increased knee flexion and a better torso angle help achieve that goal - then the cost-benefit ratio is in line.

But there are also anatomical outliers who suffer from limitations in joint range of motion and arthrokinematics (the minor movements in the joint space) that allow tricky joint movements such as components of dorsiflexion to occur.

There are legitimate orthopaedic situations where the joint structure does not allow certain movements. These are types of problems that can never be improved with soft tissue work such as stretching or a fascia roll. It can even be harmful to use such techniques. They don't change the real problems, which are the joints themselves.

Many exercisers take the conservative route with soft tissue work, stretching or perhaps even some joint mobilization training in the ankle and hip area. But if after a few sessions of these theoretically "correct" measures no results are visible and the problems have perhaps even worsened, an orthopaedic assessment of these problems should be the next step on your to-do list.

Differentiating between joint blockage of the joints and soft tissue dysfunction will save you a lot of time and frustration. And if those locked joints are the hips, ankles or any other joint, then adaptive aids like Olympic weightlifting shoes that change the relationship between the foot and the ground will help you continue to train while minimizing pain and complications in your movement patterns.

The key to success, as with any tool, is to first find potential functional pitfalls, correct them as much as possible, and THEN use the tool to enhance training performance. Stay strategic with your tools and you will reap all the benefits.

When you should not use Olympic weightlifting shoes

Often people will diagnose themselves with mechanical movement issues when in reality they simply have neurological structuring issues that hinder their coordination and ability to move without pain. And for this reason, they get weightlifting shoes. If this external crutch is used, then their poor neurological control, which is the root cause of the problem, will never improve. In fact, the pain usually gets worse in these cases.

Unless you are planning on competing in weightlifting, you should avoid adaptive weightlifting shoes and use a pair of shoes that allows you to move as naturally as possible.

If you are using a more minimalist shoe, then you should consider motor control of your functional weak points such as ankle dorsiflexion and hip flexion and rotation. These weak points are common among those who regularly use their shoes as a crutch for their heavy basic exercises.

Even if you are an Olympic weightlifter, powerlifter or CrossFitter, you should use minimalist shoes for all sport-specific barbell exercises other than power exercises to take advantage of the benefits of ground contact and ankle and foot complex function.

As a general rule of thumb, you should use adaptive equipment such as Olympic weightlifting shoes in a minimal effective dosage to gain the most benefits while allowing your body to move as naturally as possible.

By Dr. John Rusin

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/the-truth-about-belts-lifting-shoes-and-straps