Grip failing with snatch grip deadlift, not challenging otherwise

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

I am doing the low fatigue, 4 day template, and I freaking love it. I started doing snatch grip deadlifts as my secondary-day-4-accessory deadlift exercise. My issue is my grip feels like an RPE 9, with the rest of my body feels like an RPE 4. If I bring my grip in closer together (about a fist wider than what I traditionally do), my grip is still absolutely my weakest point, but then the RPE on the rest of my body is closer to a 5, maybe a 6. Am I defeating the reasoning of the exercise by not using a true snatch grip?

I had been doing deficit deadlifts as my secondary lift, and although I never went above a RPE7 on those, it still felt like it was taxing the same muscles as my conventional deadlift, but it is a harder exercise, so I used less weight. The reason I’ve changed it, is my deficit weights are starting to get closer to my conventional deadlift weights, and I don’t want to overdo it (and my conventional DL is stalling). So maybe it is good that the snatch deadlift is limiting the weight I can use, so it doesn’t add too much cumulative stress? I was doing 405x6 for my top lift on deficit deadlifts, and today my grip gave out at 364x4 4 on the snatch deadlift. I quickly put the deficit platform underneath the bar and was able to rep out 5 deficit deadlifts at RPE 7 (there was probably 15-20 seconds between sets).

My best lift is overthinking things.

2

Glad you’re enjoying the Low Fatigue template!

Regarding snatch-grip deadlifts; the wider grip shortens the “effective” length of your arms, leading to a more horizontal (and less mechanically advantageous) starting position.

There is no strict “cutoff” for what differentiates a regular grip from a snatch-grip; it’s going to be a spectrum from one extreme to the other, with trade-offs between the two in terms of specificity to your regular conventional deadlift and load.

In practice, I think that if the snatch-grip deadlift is being used as a supplemental movement for building the regular deadlift, I would train it using straps. It’s been many years since I trained this lift, but I did use straps at the time.

The main reasons to NOT use straps would be if the person is training for the snatch itself (e.g., in a weightlifting or CrossFit context), or if we are trying to aggressively limit load, say in a rehab context.

2 Likes