Do Thick Grips Work for Pull-Ups and Rows?

An honest answer built on how lifters actually use thick grips on pulls, from farmer carries to rows, and where that use goes wrong.

Table of Contents

• The Short Answer
• What Happens When You Thicken a Pulling Handle
• Training Your Back and Lats: Skip Thick Grips
• The Pulling Exercises People Use Thick Grips On
• Which Grip Design Belongs on Pulls
• Where Thick Grips Actually Pay Off
• Thick Grips on Pulling Movements at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions
• The Bottom Line

The Short Answer

It depends entirely on what you are training. If your goal is your back, your lats, or a heavier deadlift, thick grips work against you. A thicker handle shifts the limiting factor from the target muscle to your hands, your grip fails before your lats do, and the set ends early with less back stimulus than a standard bar would have delivered. Skip them there. If your goal is grip strength itself, the answer flips. Thick handle carries, hangs, holds, and rows are a legitimate and time-tested way to overload the hands and forearms, and grip athletes have trained this way for decades.

The complication is that most fat grip advice online never makes that distinction. The same lists recommend thick grips on deadlifts, rows, pull-ups, and carries without asking what the lifter is training, which is how the tool ends up on the wrong sets. This article sorts the popular pulling uses into the ones that make sense and the ones that quietly cost you, and it is honest about one more thing: for the pulls where thick grips do make sense, a cylindrical grip is the right design, not an ergonomic one. The place where an anatomical design like the Optimo One or Optimo Pro earns its keep is pressing and arm work, where the palm carries the load.

What Happens When You Thicken a Pulling Handle

On a pulling movement, the hand works as a hook. The fingers close around the bar and hold on while the lats, upper back, and posterior chain produce the force. A standard 28 millimetre bar lets the fingers wrap fully around the handle, which is mechanically efficient. Thicken that handle to 50 millimetres or more and the fingers can no longer close the loop. Holding on becomes an open-hand effort, dramatically harder, and the hands become the weakest link in the chain.

The research puts numbers on it, and the numbers depend heavily on the movement. In the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research study on bar diameter, experienced lifters reduced deadlift loads by as much as 55 percent on thicker bars, while the reduction on concentration curls was only around 5 percent. The load penalty concentrates almost entirely on pulls, where the fingers do the holding, and nearly disappears on arm work, where the palm shares the load. Keep that asymmetry in mind. It explains most of what follows.

New to thick bar training?

This article covers pulling movements specifically. For the full breakdown of grip tool categories and the science behind why thick bar training works, start with The Complete Guide to Gym Grips.

Training Your Back and Lats: Skip Thick Grips

If pull-ups, rows, lat pulldowns, and deadlifts are in your program to build your back, thick grips are the wrong tool, and it is worth being direct about why.

Grip fails first. On a thick handle, your hands and forearms reach failure well before your lats and upper back do. The set ends because you cannot hold on, not because the target muscle is done working. Every rep you lose to grip fatigue is back stimulus you did not get.

The load penalty compounds it. A 30 to 55 percent reduction in usable load means your back is training lighter than it should for weeks at a time. For a muscle group that responds to heavy pulling, that is a real cost.

The industry already agrees, from the opposite direction. Lifting straps exist precisely because grip limits back training. Straps take the hands out of the equation so the lats can be pushed to their true limit. Adding a thick grip to a row does the exact opposite of what a strap does. If serious back training removes grip as the limiter, a tool that amplifies grip as the limiter does not belong in that session.

This is not a flaw in thick grips. It is a mismatch between the tool and the goal, and the mismatch happens because popular advice rarely separates the two jobs a pulling exercise can do.

The Pulling Exercises People Use Thick Grips On

Search any fat grip guide and the recommended list is remarkably consistent: deadlifts and their variations, bent-over rows, shrugs, pull-ups and chin-ups, lat pulldowns, dead hangs, deadlift holds, farmer carries, wrist rollers. What the lists almost never do is sort those movements by what they are for, and that sorting is the entire answer. Pulling exercises with a thick grip fall into two very different buckets.

Pure grip movements: where thick grips always belong

Farmer and suitcase carries, dead hangs, deadlift and rack holds, wrist rollers, and the timed holds arm wrestlers do on revolving handles share one defining trait: there is no competing target muscle. The hold is the exercise. Nobody carries dumbbells across the gym floor to grow their lats, and nobody hangs from a bar for time to train their back. These movements exist to load supporting grip, the isometric holding strength that decides whether a bar stays in your hands, and a thicker handle raises that demand on every second of the set.

Here, grip failing is not a problem. It is the finish line. Strongman competitors, climbers, and the arm wrestlers covered in our arm wrestling training article have built training blocks around thick handle carries and holds for decades, because open-hand holding against a thick handle trains the fingers, thumb, and forearm at angles a standard bar never reaches. If you use thick grips this way, you are using them optimally.

Dual-purpose movements: where most lifters get it wrong

Rows, pull-ups, chin-ups, lat pulldowns, shrugs, and deadlifts for reps are a different case. Each one has a target muscle competing with the grip for the role of limiter. This is where the goal-blind advice does damage: a lifter reads that rows are a top fat grip exercise, adds thick grips to their back day expecting bigger lats and traps, and instead gets sets that end at the hands, at loads far below what the target muscle needs.

These movements only earn a thick grip when grip is explicitly the goal of that set, programmed as grip work. That means lighter loads, higher-rep accessory variations like Romanian deadlifts rather than top deadlift sets, or finisher sets after the heavy back work is done on a standard bar. The movement is the same. The job of the set is not, and the thick grip should follow the job.

A specific caution on pull-ups and chin-ups

Thick grip pull-ups deserve their own warning, one our Fat Grip Training Guide covers in detail: they place significant stress on the elbows, because the forearm muscles must flex the elbow and stabilize the wrist at the same time under full bodyweight. Pushed too hard or too often, that combination shows up as elbow discomfort and, in the worst cases, tendinitis. If you use a thick handle on pull-ups or hangs, treat it as low-volume grip work, keep the intensity moderate, and back off at the first sign of elbow irritation.

Which Grip Design Belongs on Pulls

Here is the concession, stated plainly: for the pulling uses that do make sense, the carries, hangs, holds, and grip-focused pulls above, use a cylindrical grip. Not ours.

Every clip-on grip has a slit where it opens to wrap around the bar. A cylinder lets you rotate that slit to the inside of the hand where the fingers close over it, and its uniform surface gives the hand nothing to press against off-axis, so the grip stays put under a hard pull. An ergonomic grip works differently. The contoured side must face the palm, which fixes the slit to the outside, and under the downward, sideways loading of a deadlift or pulldown the grip can shift and force readjustment mid-set. That is why ergonomic grips are not recommended for pulling movements at all. The full comparison of the two designs, including where each one wins, is in our cylindrical vs ergonomic breakdown.

We make ergonomic grips, and we would rather tell you where they do not belong than have a pair end up in a drawer. The design was never aimed at pulls. It was aimed at the movements where the palm, not the fingers, carries the load.

Where Thick Grips Actually Pay Off

Return to the research asymmetry from earlier: up to 55 percent load lost on the deadlift, around 5 percent lost on curls. The penalty that makes thick grips a poor back-building tool barely exists on arm work, and pressing shifts the load into the palm, away from the fingers entirely. That is not a coincidence. It is the dividing line between where thick grips tax you and where they pay you.

Pulling is also a small slice of what lifters actually do. StrengthLog's analysis of millions of workouts from over 700,000 users shows the bench press is the most logged exercise in the world at 9.7 percent of all sets, pressing movements collectively account for roughly 17 percent of logged training, and direct arm work adds roughly 8 percent more. The deadlift sits at 5 percent. Most training volume lives in presses, curls, and accessory work, and that is where the thick grip question gets its real answer.

On a press, load concentrates in the palm rather than the fingers. An anatomical palm support is designed around exactly that pattern: the contour cradles the palm where pressing force travels, keeps the bar stable under load, and holds the wrist in a natural line beneath the weight, which shows up as force output you can actually use. On curls and arm work, the contoured surface keeps the hand secure with less crushing effort, so the target muscle stays the limiter deeper into the set instead of the hands giving out first. The muscle irradiation effect that makes thick bar training work, tension radiating from the grip through the forearms into the biceps, shoulders, and chest, applies on every one of those sets.

In other words, the mechanism behind the Optimo One and Optimo Pro is built for the majority of training, and it simply is not a pulling mechanism. Judging it on pull-ups and rows is judging it on the 5 percent instead of the 25.

Go deeper on pressing

Our Fat Grip Bench Press Guide covers how thick grips change the bench press, including load selection and programming, and the Fat Grip Training Guide covers full program structure.

Thick Grips on Pulling Movements at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I use thick grips on pull-ups?

Only if grip strength is the goal of the set, and even then in small doses. Thick handle pull-ups and hangs are effective open-hand grip training, but they cut your rep count well below what your lats can handle, and they place notable stress on the elbows because the forearm flexes the elbow and stabilizes the wrist at the same time. If pull-ups are in your program for back development, do them on a standard bar and train grip separately.

Are farmer carries with thick grips a good idea?

Yes, they are one of the best uses of a thick grip on any pulling pattern. A farmer carry is a pure grip movement: there is no competing target muscle, the hold is the exercise, and a thicker handle loads the fingers, thumb, and forearm harder on every step. Use a cylindrical grip, start lighter than you expect, and progress by time or distance before adding weight.

Do thick grips make rows and deadlifts harder?

Yes, substantially. Research in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research recorded load reductions of up to 55 percent on the deadlift with thicker bar diameters, because the fingers cannot close around a thick handle and holding on becomes the limiting factor. The same research found only around a 5 percent reduction on concentration curls. That difficulty is useful if you are training grip and counterproductive if you are training your back.

Why are Optimo grips not recommended for pulling movements?

The anatomical design fixes the grip's orientation in the hand: the contoured palm support faces the palm, which places the opening slit on the outside. Under heavy pulling load the grip can shift and need readjustment. A cylindrical grip avoids this because its slit can rotate to the inside of the hand, so for pulls the cylinder is the better design. Optimo grips are designed for pressing, curling, and accessory work, where the palm carries the load and the palm support does its job.

Can I train grip and back in the same program?

Yes, and most serious programs should. Keep your heaviest rows, pulldowns, and deadlifts on a standard bar so the back gets full stimulus, then add dedicated grip work such as thick handle carries, holds, or wrist work in separate sets. Our Fat Grip Training Guide covers how to structure both within one week of training.

The Bottom Line

Thick grips on pulling movements are neither a gimmick nor a universal upgrade, and the internet's habit of recommending them on every pull without asking why is how they end up misused. Sort the movements by their job and the answer is clean. On pure grip work, carries, hangs, and holds, thick grips are the right tool and always have been. On dual-purpose pulls like rows and pull-ups, they belong only on sets where grip is the stated goal, at accessory loads, with real caution on pull-ups for the elbows. On back development and heavy deadlifts, they subtract more than they add, and a cylindrical grip is the correct design for every pulling use that survives that sorting.

The anatomical design behind Optimo was built for a different job: activating more muscle through thick bar training on the presses, curls, and accessory work that make up most of what lifters do, with a palm support that keeps the bar stable exactly where pressing force travels, on the movements where the research shows the load penalty nearly disappears. Use the right tool on the right track and both your back and your grip come out ahead.

References

Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Bar diameter, load reduction, and pressing comfort findings across six exercises and three bar diameters in experienced lifters.

StrengthLog. The Most Popular Gym Exercises for Men and Women. Analysis of millions of workouts from 700,000+ users. strengthlog.com/most-popular-exercises

Ready to put thick bar training where it works hardest? Explore the Optimo One and Optimo Pro.