Advice please!
I am still a newbie. I am on the OP routine.
I recently got my deadlift up to 245 lbs.
The problem is, now that it's that heavy, my fingers are giving out. The bar rapidly slips in my hands until it's at the first two knuckles, and it feels like I'm going to drop it at any moment. I had to stop at 4 reps today because of this.
I went to Walmart and bought some weightlifting gloves, hoping that would help, but it did not help at all. I plan to return them the next time I go.
So... what can I do, if anything? It's very frustrating because I feel like the rest of my body could definitely support an increase in weight, but my fingers just do not want to cooperate. Do I just need to wait for them to strengthen up or something?
Thank you.
Your grip strength is failing you. Three things I can suggest.
1) What grip are you using? That is, are your palms facing towards you, away from you, or one away and one towards? If you use a mixed grip (one palm towards you, one away) you'll generally have a better grip on the bar than if you use double overhand or god forbid double underhand.
2) You can start doing farmer's walks with dumbbells (Google it, lots of videos) to improve your grip strength.
3) Use weightlifting chalk (or liquid chalk even) which you can buy on Amazon. It will greatly reduce slippage.
I recommend farmers walks and mixed grip to start. Oh, but for mixed grip, I'd only use it on your heaviest lifts when needed, otherwise I think it is preferential to stick with double overhand for as long as possible to reduce any risk of creating a strength imbalance.