Make your own CHEAP Fat Gripz

In this video I show you how to make your own cheap and effective Fat Gripz alternatives.

It's no secret that training with a thicker bar increases forearm muscle size and rapidly improves grip strength. For many it's not viable to own a thick bar and so you can see how FatGripz have become so popular as a versatile way of achieving the same effects.

However, they are quite expensive! There are many methods for increasing bar thickness: wrapping cloth, towels etc around it provides substantial thickness but it can often be uneven, wrapping with several rolls of tape will increase thickness but this tends to be a semi permanent implement.

What I do is take a piece of domestic pipe lagging and cut two pieces just more than my palms width in length. They come pre split so all you have to do is pull them apart and there you go, the slip over the bar and provide you with an easy and cheap alternative to FatGrips.

Over time they will compress and you will lose some thickness but all you have to do is cut up another pair and away you go again... at a fraction of the cost. Please remember that these are a CHEAP alternative to using a product like Fat Gripz! This method doesn't have the same level of "hardness" as using Fat Gripz but if your sole goal is to simply add thickness then this WILL WORK. Some questions that came up since making this video: Q - "Wouldn't this be dangerous to use when doing things like snatch and clean and jerk?" A - You really shouldn't be using a thicker bar for complex technical manouevres like olympic weightlifting lifts. There's a reason the bars used by weightlifters is thinner that normal bars. Q - "Won't this just slip straight off the bar?" A - No. Does the bar just slip out of your hands normally? No because you are gripping the bar tight (or at least you should be!) It can't just slip out if you are holding on tight. The knurling even bites into the foam so it won't be slipping.