Chalk your hands before lifting
Grip strength is a determining factor in success during “pulling” lifts like cleans, deadlifts, pull-ups, and the like. Sweaty palms significantly reduce grip strength. Gym chalk is a drying agent; it substantially improves your grip.
Unfortunately, most commercial gyms ban the use of weightlifting chalk. Even though it’s probably the most useful weight lifting accessory, it makes a mess and gym owners don’t like it.
What is weight lifting chalk?
Weightlifting chalk is powdered magnesium carbonate. It’s sold loose, in powder form, or in convenient cakes. It’s easier to coat your hands with powder, but the cakes make much less mess. So, it’s a tradeoff between convenience and cleanliness: take your pick.
Keep gym chalk in a closed, airtight container or Ziploc bag.
Liquid chalk: what is it?
“Liquid chalk” is aluminum chlorohydrate in a quick-dry alcohol solution. Spray it on your hands, let it dry, then go work out. This salt is an antiperspirant. It keeps your palms from sweating. However, it doesn’t prevent moisture from making your palms slippery. Basically, if you go to the supermarket and buy a can of spray antiperspirant/deodorant, you will have the same thing as liquid chalk.
You can find liquid chalk for sale at Amazon here: Liquid Chalk for the Grip
Some athletes use “liquid chalk” when their gym owner prohibits the use of weightlifting chalk. But the results are disappointing. It’s probably best to sneak some “real” chalk into the gym.
Many brands of liquid chalk are sold to rock-climbing athletes who train at indoor climbing gyms.
Will gym chalk prevent calluses?
No. It reduces the slipperiness of your palms. This can actually encourage callus formation. If you want to reduce calluses, get some weight lifting gloves.
Can I use talc or rosin instead of weight lifting chalk?
No.
Talc is magnesium silicate; it is not the same as weight lifting chalk. Instead of aiding your grip, talc will reduce it. Talc is slippery; use it to reduce friction during kettlebell swings or similar exercises.
Rosin is an organic resin exuded by conifers. Although a baseball pitcher’s rosin bag is superficially similar to a weight-lifter’s chalk bag, they are two entirely different things.
Rosin is sticky. Its use is illegal during weight lifting competitions. It will hasten the formation of calluses. It has no place in the weight room.
What are the alternatives to weight lifting chalk?
If grip strength is holding you back but you can’t use weight lifting chalk, you have several options:
- Weightlifting gloves
- Weight lifters’ wrist straps
- A sheet of inner-tube rubber wrapped around the bar
- Weight lifting hooks
Check out the selection of weight lifting chalk at Amazon.com
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Good lifting chalk is the best thing for the grip, but the hardest to find in mainstream gyms. One reason ‘hardcore’ gyms are gaining in popularity is that they allow lifting chalk. If you are used to chalking up before a lift, its hard to work out in a no-chalk gym.
Mark Rippetoe states in _Starting Strength_ (2nd ed.) that chalk does aid in preventing *excessive* callous formation as it reduces folding of skin on itself. Of course he also says that callous formation is essential to good lifting, so if you want to avoid it completely… you can’t lift properly. On the subject of gloves he states that they are just another surface prone to slipping added to the mix and should be avoided – again the point is that some callouses are the only way to lift well. This is all paraphrased.
Jacques wrote:
That’s true. If you stick to biceps curls and triceps kickbacks, you can easily avoid callouses. But once you start with deadlifts (and other heavy “pulling” moves), they’re unavoidable.
Thanks for the comments.