Fat Gripz Product Review
$59.99
Amazon.com
Fat Gripz: Product
Fat Gripz are the kings of fat-grip training products, and recently sent us their flagship product for one of our Athletes Insight product reviews. Fat Gripz are essentially devices that make standard barbells and dumbells thicker, saving you the expense of having to buy weights and bars with a thicker diameter.
But why would you want thicker-than-standard bar diameters in the first place?
The basic science behind it goes that by increasing the thickness of the bar significantly increases the activation and exertion of the hand, forearm, and upper arm muscles. Greater muscular force results in faster strength and size gains, which is often the entire point that many people go to the gym – to chase those gains!
Fat Gripz will save you a lot of money as they are really portable and you can just use them in your usual gym- much cheaper than spending a ton of money on thick-diameter bars and equipment. They are also a favorite of world champion bodybuilders such as Jay Cutler andPhil Heath, critically-acclaimed trainer Charles Poliquin, and thousands of athletes and military worldwide.
Let’s get down to using them.
Our Experience
So first off they are very compact, a bit heavier than you might guess by looking at them, but this is due to the rubber-like, military-grade compound used. Make no mistake, they are seriously heavy duty! They are nicely packaged, and retail with an MSRP of $39.
We have been using these for almost two months now (whilst also testing Beet Natural pre-workout) and can confidently say that they are very easy and quick to take on and off of dumbbells and barbells. With the former in particular, this makes it ideal if you are doing dropsets or a pyramid where you would need to use lots of different weights.
We found too that it became a good way to make you work harder, whilst using less weight. There is certainly a legion of gym-goers wary about putting too much stress on their tendons and ligaments from repeatedly lifting heavy weights week in, week out. Here you have the opportunity to increase muscle activation, whilst reducing the load requirements, which will be a large product advantage for some. Using them across a range of exercises certainly provided a good arm pump!
They also don’t seem to get slippery when your hands get sweaty, and even though there has to be an opening point (to be able to put them onto bars), I never felt that during an exercise they might come off- they are very tight. It is difficult to say if over time, they may become less so, but they certainly feel solid and well-built.
We got thinking about how this could affect our training, and realized that exercises where lighter weights may be necessary (doing shoulder raises, for example), this was a great way to increase the demand on our body and get more out of an exercise. With the shoulder raise example, the strength and endurance of the shoulders ultimately dictates the weight that can be used; but we know full well that isn’t providing the same level of stress/strain on the forearms, which can often take much more. So using the Fat Gripz provides a good way to help counter that.
Pros & Cons
PROS:
- Convenient: I feel like this is the main product draw here. Whether they are convenient because they are small and can easily be thrown into your gym bag, or because you don’t need to buy a new rack of dumbbells with thicker bars, this is a key factor in the purchasing decision.
- Challenging: The Fat gripz add a new dimension to many exercises, and if you feel your wrist/forearm/grip strength is lacking, these are a great way to address this issue without significantly changing up your workout routine or adding 20 minutes of ‘wrist work’ onto the end of your workouts.
- Durable: The materials used are as tough as you are going to get- the compound does not compress easily, and yet is grippy enough that sweaty hands aren’t going to prevent you from reaping the benefits of this training tool.
CONS:
- Pay Attention: During testing Sara managed to pinch her hand in the opening on the Fat Gripz (the split where you open the grip to attach onto a bar) so make sure it is facing away from the palm of your hand during use!
Fat Gripz: Usefulness For Athletes
We have rated the Usefulness For Athletes at a 8.5
Ultimately, do I believe that the Fat Gripz provide a large advantage over training without them? I’m not so sure, but I DO see real value here for those who are perhaps limited by wrist and forearm strength, train for aesthetics and want bigger arms, or as a way to tax the body when using lighter weights. They are a solid addition to any gym bag.
