I believe it is a consensus that training the pronated grip for the deadlift will improve both grip strength and the deadlift itself. As Altug Dural described his protocol (the 1-2-3 ladder), I became curious and started to ask around about people’s pronated grip deadlift PR. Most people don’t know and never tried to measure that. For those who did, I observed a variation from 62% to 78% of the alternate grip deadlift PR for men with big hands.
My hand is small even considering women’s small hands. It is especially small. I’ve been training my pronated grip real hard for months and I finally managed to lift… less than 50% of my alternate grip dealift. To be precise, 46%. And that is a great improvement over the previous 28% ratio.
When I fell in love with powerlifting, my chief concern was the deadlift. I had been diagnosed years before as having some “idiopathic shit” on my right hand when I was a fencer. With cortisone infiltration, as was default at the time, my grip became even weaker. As I decided to become a powerlifter, I started working on my grip and I was amazed on how successful I was in improving it. I became a mediocre deadlifter – not a shitty one.
My deadlift is much better now, but the limit is still the grip. I wonder how far a small handed lifter can improve the pronated/alternate grip ratio.
That is something to keep studying and trying to understand more about grip strength and its role in overall strength.