If you spend time bodybuilding or browsing the pages of Men’s Health, you might have heard about a product called Fat Gripz. As you know, this product claims to help you build more muscle by using a wide grip while training.
After being interested in how well this product works, I decided to get it and give it an unbiased review.
In this Fat Gripz review, you’ll learn:
- What Fat Gripz are
- My review of this product with pros and cons
- Where to find Fat Gripz for sale online
- Other popular thick bar training products
Sound good? Let’s get started!
What Are Fat Gripz?
Fat Gripz are rubber attachments you place around dumbbells, barbells, and cable attachments to widen your grip. Widening your grip while weightlifting uses more of your muscle fiber than normal, helping you build muscle faster.
This product is the result of extensive research that shows using a wider, Olympic-style barbell builds strength faster than normal.
I first learn while researching information for this Fat Gripz review that it claims to give you the ability to build muscle faster. This happens because you use Fat Gripz for wider bars instead of buying new thick bars. Let’s now take a look at how well this product worked.
The Main Fat Gripz Benefits
If you’re new to Fat Gripz and thick bar training, it’s understandable to want to know more about these subjects. Before we get into my Fat Gripz review, here are few reasons why fat grip training can be very beneficial.
Gaining Muscle Faster
The main goals of most people who exercise is to get muscle and strength gains. When you’re putting in the work needed for a successful workout routine, it’s understandable to want muscle gains as fast as possible.
However, engaging in the same type of training for months or years in a row will only take you so far. Eventually, your muscle gains will reach a plateau.
If you want maximum strength and muscle, you’ll need to occasionally change up your workout routine.
Giving Your Wrists and Shoulders a Break
Traditional training can put a lot of strain on your wrists and shoulders. When you start fat grip training, this situation changes. After doing this, more muscles in your hands and forearms get used while you train.
The end result of using a thicker grip when training is that you’re sharing weight loads among your shoulders, wrists, hands, and forearms.
Fixing Strength Imbalances
Let’s say that you were to only focus on getting bigger arms while training. As you likely know, only working out one muscle group won’t give you muscles all over your body.
Unfortunately, some people only work to achieve muscle growth for something like their arms or chest. If you take part in this type of training, it’s going to result in strength imbalances.
Over time, these imbalances can drastically lower your overall strength. Fortunately, thick grips result in more muscle activation throughout your body.
Many people find that using fat grips leads to increased overall strength. From what I’ve read in several Fat Gripz reviews, this product works well for correcting strength imbalances.
Saving Money
You probably don’t need me telling you that home training equipment can get expensive.
Most of us (myself included) don’t want to spend $199-$300 for a thick bar. Factor in the new dumbbells you’d need, and the costs to lift weights with all-new equipment can add up fast.
Fortunately, Fat Gripz allow you to have thick bars or dumbbells. These thick pieces of rubber are much less expensive than needing to upgrade all of your exercise equipment.
Improving Your Grip Strength
Whether you’re doing a bicep curl or a set of pull-ups, your grip strength plays an important role in these and many more exercises.
Unfortunately, many people don’t know that their grip strength is weak. It’s understandable that this problem affects a lot of people. Many people focus too much on the show-off muscles like the biceps and chest.
Only focusing on these muscles means doing a lot of bicep curls and bench pressing. When you begin using Fat Gripz, it begins giving you a stronger grip.
This newfound grip strength can mean being able to hold on to the bar when you’re doing other exercises like squats and deadlifts.
Extremely Versatile
Another reason I like Fat Gripz is that they allow you to achieve maximum muscle activation with almost any type of strength training equipment.
You can train your upper body by using Fat Gripz on a standard barbell. If you’re after more arm size, use these fat grips on your dumbells. For those with the power, you could also use them during full-body Olympic lifts.
Fat Gripz Review: Should You Buy It?
While waiting for this product to arrive from Amazon, I did a little research on this company’s official website. Something I noticed was the mention of checking your ego at the door with this product. What that means is that you’ll want to lower the weight you normally train with while using Fat Gripz. Trust me, you’ll still get a great muscle pump with this product.
How Do You Use Fat Gripz?
One thing I wasn’t sure of was how to place my Fat Gripz around my standard barbell or dumbbells. Fortunately, it has an opening that’s super easy to place around anything you’re going to work out with. It takes seconds and you’re ready to start using your Fat Gripz.
As far as working out with Fat Gripz, it’s pretty straightforward. You still train as you normally would.
The First Few Workouts
The first few times you use Fat Gripz, I recommend lifting with lighter weight overall. Since you’ve likely spent months, if not years, training with a standard width barbell or dumbbell, you’ll need to build up these newer muscles.
If you’re like me, you should feel the burn throughout your forearms while training with Fat Gripz. I really liked using these grips during my bench press for that thick barbell feel. Best of all, I didn’t have to spend hundreds of dollars for an actual thick bar for my home gym!
If you’re looking for an effective and inexpensive way to get stronger, regardless of whether you’re a novice or advanced weightlifter, I highly recommend trying Fat Gripz. From the time and workouts spent putting together this Fat Gripz review, I noticed it can be a big help for gaining bigger arms. This product is also great for getting rid of strength imbalances or slow results in the gym.
Overall, you should notice that your grip strength increases while using this product. I also noticed noticeably bigger forearms and upper arms as I put together this Fat Gripz review.
You’ve heard how I felt about the Fat Gripz Pro Series. But it’s understandable to know how others felt about this product. With that in mind, Fat Gripz currently has a 4.8 rating based on 11,439 ratings on Amazon. The Fat Gripz Extreme has a 4.8 rating on Amazon based on 856 ratings.
The Fat Gripz Extreme for an even thicker bar
Considering the popularity of the Fat Gripz product, it comes as no surprise that there’s another version of this product on the market. If you want to take your workouts one step further, you might like the Fat Gripz Extreme.
The one major difference between the Fat Gripz Pro and the Extreme is the width of these products. The Fat Gripz Pro has a diameter of 2.23 inches or 5.7 centimeters. The Extreme version has a larger diameter of 2.75 inches or 7 centimeters.
Unless you’re used to training with thicker bars, I’d recommend using the Fat Gripz Pro first. But, if you feel up to the additional challenge, try out the Extreme.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Increasing your grip strength
- Using more muscle fibers while you lift weights
- Getting stronger forearms and bigger biceps
- Backed by many studies
- Featured in Men’s Health
- Award-winning product
- Easy to use
- Made of thick, durable rubber that doesn’t chip
Cons:
- Might be a little too pricey for some people
Popular Fat Gripz Alternatives
If the information in my Fat Gripz review didn’t appeal to you, don’t worry! There are several popular alternative grips to consider. Here’s a closer look at a few popular Fat Gripz alternatives.
1. Iron Bull Strength Alpha Grips
One of the most popular Fat Gripz alternatives would be bar grips from Iron Bull Strength. Known as the Iron Bull Strength Alpha Grips, these items are available in three different diameters: 2 inches, 2.5 inches, and 3 inches.
As you can see, these products are quite similar in design to Fat Gripz. What makes this product different is that it features a curved design, which claims to be more comfortable on your palms while you’re working out. In some Fat Gripz reviews, not everyone finds this product to be comfortable. So, Iron Bull Strength’s product might solve that problem.
The Iron Bull Strength Alpha Grips currently have a rating of 4.6 stars based on 1,240 reviews.
2. Core Prodigy Fit Grips
Another popular alternative to Fat Gripz is the Core Prodigy Fit Grips. What’s cool about this item is that it comes with both ball and cylinder grips.
I’ll be honest, the ball grips look a little too big to me. However, I could see where those grips might be good in the right situation. You can also order just the cylinder grips.
Made from silicone, the Core Prodigy Fit Grips might provide a little more softness if that’s what you’re looking for. This product has an overall Amazon rating of 4.5 stars, based on 1,033 reviews.
3. Yes4All Thick Rubber Grips
Lastly, there is also the Yes4All Thick Rubber Grips. The main advantage of these items is that they’re less expensive than most other options on this list. However, they’re also quite small and that’s not going to be for everyone.
You can learn more about them by checking out this product on Amazon. It currently has a 4.5 overall rating based on 2,237 reviews.
I hope that you enjoy this Fat Gripz review. When used properly, this product can improve your strength training efforts. Overall, I’d definitely recommend having these grip strength enhancers in your gym bag. Fat Gripz are one of the least expensive (yet most effective) workout products I’ve tried. Be warned, you’ll need to start out using Fat Gripz with lighter weights (at first).