I wanted to write a Fat Gripz review because I have used Fat Gripz for years, and I know that other people will have a similar experience with them as I have.
When looking at this simple, yet, unique product, I understand that the primary question most people have is, “do Fat Gripz work?”
After using them for just a short amount of time, I am confident you will realize Fat Gripz work, and there are many Fat Gripz benefits that make it worth buying this product.
So, in my Fat Gripz review, I will help you understand why Fat Gripz work, how to use Fat Gripz, and what are the benefits of Fat Gripz.
What Are Fat Gripz?
Fat Gripz are specially made rubber grips that allow you to convert any barbell or dumbbell into a “thick bar.”
Thick bar training is a popular concept in powerlifting and bodybuilding because it increases muscle activity and assists with building bigger and stronger muscles.
Instead of buying a “thick bar” to do thick bar training, you can simply buy Fat Gripz instead!
If you don’t have a thick bar available for thick bar training, Fat Gripz are your best option because they can instantly convert barbells, dumbbells, chin-up bars, cable attachments several other exercise machines into “thick bars” for thick bar training.
Although there are many Fat Gripz alternatives now, Fat Gripz are the original brand of this training tool, and they are the best quality of these type of products.
Fat Gripz are built to last because they are made from a military-grade high-density compound, so you will not have to worry about these breaking or wearing out like other alternatives!
What Exercises Should You Use Fat Gripz For?
There are a variety of different exercises you can do with Fat Gripz. Here are a few of my favorite exercises to use Fat Gripz for:
- Bicep Curls
- Bent Over Rows
- Single Arm Rows
- Lat Pull-downs
- Bench Press
- Overhead Press
- Face Pulls
- Deadlifts (All Types)
There are other exercises you can do with these grips, but these are a few of my favorites.
As a disclaimer, you should not do Olympic Lifts or explosive exercises with Fat Gripz. When you do Olympic Lifts (like the power clean and snatch), there is a chance that the Fat Gripz may come off of the barbell, dumbbell, or kettlebell.
So, don’t use Fat Gripz during these types of exercises.
Also, if you are using Fat Gripz while bench pressing or overhead pressing, make sure that the side of the Fat Gripz your palm is pushing into is the solid-closed side and not the side that opens as an attachment.
Now, here are the top 10 Fat Gripz benefits:
Top 10 Fat Gripz Benefits
There are many benefits of Fat Gripz because there are many ways and reasons to use this fitness product. However, here are ten Fat Gripz benefits that will apply to the majority of people:
1.) Increased Muscle Activation
The primary benefit of Fat Gripz is that when you use them, they promote increased muscle activation because the thicker handles stimulate more muscles to be recruited for each exercise.
Specifically, research has indicated that using fat grips promotes increased muscle activation in the forearm and shoulder muscles (Krings et al, 2021).
This is especially useful for muscle activation in your hands, forearms, and in your upper arms. Additionally, you will notice a variety of different muscles are activated during different exercises you use Fat Gripz for because when your hand and arm muscles are activated more, other muscles will also work differently.
The increase in muscle activation will lead to increased strength and muscle growth.
2.) Promotes Well-Rounded Arm Training
Even if you do your best to do a conventional arm workout from all different angles, and with all different muscles, you will still leave much to be desired in terms of a total arm workout.
With Fat Gripz or thick-bar training, you will easily be able to do a complete arm workout that stimulates, strengthens, and grows all the muscle groups of your arm.
A great example is forearm training.
Often your current grip strength will compensate for actual forearm muscle development, leaving a gap in your overall training. Utilizing Fat Gripz will give you a more well-rounded training session that actually strengthens your forearm muscles.
As a result, you will notice significant increases in the strength and size of your upper body muscles.
A great example of the ability of Fat Gripz to promote arm strength was conducted on NCAA Division 1 male golfers. According to a study on the effects of the use of Fat Gripz on NCAA Division 1 male golfers that was published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research,
“The Fat Gripz group demonstrated significant increases (p ≤ 0.05) in ball speed, carry, drive distance, and left hand grip strength after 8 weeks of resistance training (RT).”
In my opinion, Fat Gripz are the simplest way to get stronger and bigger arms!
3.) Help You Maintain Control of the Eccentric Phase in Arm Exercises
Along with helping increase your overall muscle activation, using Fat Gripz will also help you produce more force in the eccentric phase of many arm exercises, which will help you build more strength and muscle mass.
When you do exercises with Fat Gripz, your flexors and extensors of the muscles in your hand and forearm are forced into continuous contraction during both the eccentric and concentric aspects of your movement.
When using a smaller bar, your forearm and muscles of your hand usually have a tendency to relax during the eccentric contraction, ultimately losing a huge amount of potential gains in both strength and mass.
Simply using Fat Gripz so that these muscles cannot “sleep” during the eccentric phase will bring you a particularly unique stimulus right away!
4.) Improve Movement Pattern of All Weightlifting Movements
Fat Gripz are a great training tool because they make each movement more difficult. Due to that, you have to concentrate more and use better form for every exercise you do with them.
By forcing you to control the exercise you are doing, you can break through plateaus that you didn’t even know you were stuck at!
One of the most surprising Fat Gripz benefits I noticed was that using them for deadlifts helped me develop a better deadlift form! Since the grips make even light deadlifts challenging, you are forced to use perfect form even on lighter reps, which makes heavier deadlifts (without the use of the grips) feel more comfortable!
Another movement that becomes much more fluid from concentrating more is the traditional dumbbell curl.
The dumbbell curl is probably the most used exercise ever, but too many people whip through the movement and never create any useful muscle or strength
Utilizing Fat Gripz during your dumbbell curls will help you to remain focused, control your pace, and actually get some benefits out of the exercise!
5.) Reduce Joint Stress and Joint Pain
By doing exercises with Fat Gripz, you will generally experience fewer injuries and muscle imbalances because they activate muscles that help stabilize and reduce stress on your joints.
For example, normally, I have trouble bench pressing or overhead pressing because I tore my left shoulder labrum while I was in college. However, Fat Gripz allow me to do these pressing exercises with less pain and less soreness afterward!
Your shoulder and elbows will thank you for buying Fat Gripz!
6.) They Can Help You Lose Weight Faster!
When your metabolism increases, it is easier to lose weight fast.
You can increase your metabolism in a wide variety of ways, but building muscle and doing difficult resistance exercises are two of the best ways to do so.
Using Fat Gripz will help you gain muscle fast, which will ultimately help you also lose weight or reduce your body fat percentage.
You can use them for traditional arm exercises, pull-ups or inverted rows, deadlifts and a variety of other exercises to build more muscle, increase your metabolism, and develop an aesthetic body!
7.) The Easiest Tool to Increase Your Max Deadlift
I’ve mentioned using Fat Gripz for deadlifts a couple of times already, but I believe it is important for you to know that I believe that they are the simplest and best tool to help increase your maximum deadlift, safely.
According to one limited research study conducted at the University of Drexel,
“Fat Gripz™ can be combined with a strength training deadlift protocol to significantly increase 5RM deadlift strength performance in female university students”
In fact, getting a bigger deadlift was the initial reason for buying my own pair of Fat Gripz, and the results came quickly!
For many people, the main limiting factor in deadlift strength is the ability to hold the bar while it is on the way up. If you improve your grip strength, you will quickly improve your deadlift strength.
Don’t believe me?
Give it a try yourself!
You will be humbled by only being able to deadlift 135-185 pounds when you first do deadlifts with Fat Gripz, but you will quickly see how this makes it easier to deadlift heavier weights once you take the grips off!
I prefer to do my warm-up sets of deadlifts with the grips on, and then take them off as I move up in weight. I think the most I ever deadlifted with Fat Gripz on the bar was 5 reps of 225 pounds, and that was also the day I came the closest to pulling 500lbs in my weight lifting career!
8.) Improve Grip Strength
One of the most useful Fat Gripz benefits is that they perfectly train the natural function of the human hand, which is necessary for lifting awkward and heavy objects. Surprisingly, lifting weights does not truly stimulate grip strength very well, leaving “real world” strength often much behind.
Training with Fat-Gripz or thick bars will correlate much better to the necessities of lifting and moving objects in everyday life.
For those people who simply want to be stronger when moving boxes or couches around their house, Fat Gripz are an excellent tool for making these real-life tasks simpler through strength training!
For those who do combat sports or need to be prepared for daily combat (military, police), Fat Gripz are an amazing tool for increasing your grip and grappling strength.
Combat sport athletes, military personnel, or law enforcement officers must have a strong grip because they are in literal life or death scenarios often, so these people also need every advantage possible to increase their grip strength.
If you want a stronger grip and stronger hands for real-world activities, Fat Gripz are an excellent tool to use!
Additionally, grip strength is directly correlated with lower all-cause mortality risk (Galet et al, 2007). Using Fat Grpiz over the course of your life is a evidence-based approach to living a long and healthy life!
9.) They Are Ready to Use in Seconds!
Fat Gripz are amazing because it only takes you a few seconds to put them on your dumbbells, pull-up bars, or barbells, and then you are ready to go!
Fat Gripz are excellently made, and they remain intact until you are ready to take them off. The safety and portability of this device is unmatched, and the learning curve is negligible.
You can take them with you anywhere, and they are extremely compact so they do not take up much space.
This is an especially useful trait if you are traveling a lot. If you are someone who travels often but still would like to workout while traveling, Fat Gripz can make even a weak hotel gym more-than-useful.
Just attach your grips to whatever equipment you have available, and your workout will immediately become more intense and beneficial!
10.) They Are an Affordable Fitness Tool
Last, but certainly not least, one of the main Fat Gripz benefits is that they are actually affordable. For all the benefits you’ve seen listed in this article, you only need to spend about $30 and you will have a multi-purpose, easy-to-use tool that will improve your body in a variety of ways!
This isn’t a fitness tool that costs $100, $200, or even $50, they are an affordable tool that can make a huge difference for you!
How Often Should You Use Fat Gripz?
Since there are several different ways you can use Fat Gripz, you can use Fat Gripz often. However, you should maintain the rule of not exercising a specific body part too frequently because your body still needs time to recover.
So, you should start by not using Fat Gripz more often than every other training session, to allow your hands and forearms the time to recover from the unique muscle stimulation of using Fat Gripz. In other words, I don’t believe you should use Fat Gripz more than two to three times per week after purchasing them.
However, after 4-6 weeks of using Fat Gripz, you can begin to use them more often.
If you are continuously changing how you use them, you can use Fat Gripz in nearly all of your workouts.
Fat Gripz Results – What to Expect From Using Fat Gripz?
In simple terms, here are some of the main Fat Gripz results you can expect after buying and using them:
- Bigger Arms (mostly biceps)
- Better Grip Strength
- Healthier Elbows and Shoulders
- A Stronger and More Muscular Body
Although individual Fat Gripz results will and should vary, these are a few results of using Fat Gripz that can naturally occur simply from using Fat Gripz in your workouts a couple of times per week.
Do Fat Gripz Work?
Fat Gripz work, there is no doubt about it in my mind. Fat Gripz are easily one of my favorite fitness products, and I have seen them work for myself and others who I train with.
There are a lot of reasons to be nervous about purchasing different fitness products because they can be expensive and gimmicky, but Fat Gripz are as close to a sure thing as you can buy. The science behind them is simple and effective, and they are the type of fitness product that you will want to use more, and more.
Where to Buy Fat Gripz?
If you are trying to figure out where to buy Fat Gripz, you will be happy to know there are many places you can purchase Fat Gripz from.
The quickest and most efficient place to buy Fat Gripz, in my opinion, is through Amazon. If you are an Amazon Prime customer, you should certainly consider buying Fat Gripz on Amazon because you are automatically getting free two-day shipping.
I also feel this way because if you click on one of the Amazon links on my website I receive a small commission from the sale, so I would very much appreciate it if you did that!
Anyways, even the Fat Gripz official website has a link to their product on Amazon when you try to buy from their official website, so I believe it is your best option.
Best Fat Gripz Alternatives
Also, Fat Gripz are affordable enough that you don’t need to try to save money on one of the knock-off alternatives!
In my opinion, you should not look for alternatives to Fat Gripz, and you should purchase the original!
However, if you want a DIY thick bar training alternative, you can simply wrap a small hand towel over the bar and grab onto it. The results won’t be the same, but they are sufficient until you finally purchase a pair of Fat Gripz!
If you truly want to try a cheaper alternative to Fat Gripz, my primary suggestion is are the Amazon Basics Dumbbell and Barbell Grips (Amazon Fat Gripz).
The “Amazon Fat Gripz” are cheaper, although I do not believe they will last as long. However, the “Amazon Fat Gripz” have a lot of positive reviews and they are a decent Fat Gripz alternative.
Concluding Thoughts – Fat Gripz Review
I wanted to write a Fat Gripz review because I believe in this product, and I am confident you will quickly realize this small investment can make a huge difference for you.
For the small cost of buying one pair of Fat Gripz, you can easily improve your grip strength, save your shoulders and elbows from unnecessary strain, build a stronger deadlift, and build a more complete and functional body overall!
I hope my Fat Gripz review was helpful for you when deciding whether or not you should buy them. If you have any additional questions, please don’t be afraid to ask!
