What’s in Your Gym Bag? A Quick & Dirty Guide to Personal Lifting Gear
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What gear should you have in your gym bag (or at home) when it’s time to train? Let’s dive in, and we’ll provide plenty of additional resources for each item along the way.
Heads up - the last item in this article is the most important, so keep reading.
Lifting Shoes
Lifting shoes have a rigid, non-compressible sole, a slightly elevated heel, and one or two metatarsal straps. They provide an extremely solid base of support and therefore permit efficient force transfer between you and the floor.
Big deal. Big. Huge.
For a more in-depth treatment of lifting shoes and the rationale for using them, click on the article below or watch the included video.
LIFTING SHOES: The Complete Guide to the Best and WORST Shoes! (Lifting Gear Series)
A number of manufacturers make quality lifting shoes - Nike, Do-Win, Inov-8, and Adidas are just a few of the more well-known brands. Below are some of the shoe recommendations and links we usually send to new members as a starting point for shopping:
Note: I would not recommend the Adidas Powerlift or any other lifting shoe with a compressed foam sole. The Powerlift is fairly popular due to its price point and is certainly still better than non-lifting shoe options, but the sole is not as rigid as we’d like, and quite simply, there are better options (such as its sibling, the Adidas Adipower 3).
A final note - Chuck Taylors are not lifting shoes. They are squishy and therefore provide lousy force transfer between you and the floor. Walk in Chucks. Don’t lift in Chucks.
Lifting Belt
A quality lifting belt helps you provide rigidity and stability when lifting. As a result, it allows you to have efficient force transfer from the things generating force in a given lift all the way to the barbell - e.g., transferring force from the hips and the legs in the squat through your rigid midsection (i.e., trunk) up to the barbell sitting on your back.
Some people can use a belt with a 4” width, and some people need a 3” belt (or even a 2.5” belt). For more information on belt widths as well as everything else belt-related, check out the article below or watch the included video.
LIFTING BELTS: The Complete Guide and What NOT to Get! (Lifting Gear Series)
A quality belt will last years - possibly your entire training career - so invest in a good one. With this in mind, here are a few belt options we typically recommend:
Pioneer Cut - single prong with 1/2” adjustments, 4” wide x 10mm thick
Pioneer - PAL V2, 4” wide x 10mm thick (if you’re looking for a lever belt)
Dominion Strength - single prong, 3” wide x 10 mm thick
Dominion Strength - single prong, 4” wide x 10 mm thick
Knee Sleeves
Most people will come to appreciate and benefit from knee sleeves at some point in their lifting careers. They provide warmth and compression to the knees (specifically for squatting), and your knees will probably appreciate this greatly.
Sleeves are typically made of neoprene and most often come in 5 mm or 7 mm thicknesses. Skip the 5 mm option and go with the 7 mm sleeves.
For a more in-depth treatment on knee sleeves, check out the article below or watch the included video.
KNEE SLEEVES: The Complete Guide and the BEST Way to Put Them On (Lifting Gear Series)
Below are a few solid options for sleeves that we commonly recommend to our members:
Wrist Wraps
Wrist wraps (or simply “wraps”) provide support for your wrists, come in pairs, and each wrap typically includes a thumb loop at one end, the elastic body of the wrap, and then a velcro closure system at the other end of the wrap.
Since wraps provide stability to the wrist joint, they are very useful for pressing movements (e.g., press and bench press) and are also sometimes used when snatching, cleaning, or jerking.
For more information on wrist wraps, check out the article below or watch the included video.
WRIST WRAPS: The Complete Guide and How NOT to Put Them On! (Lifting Gear Series)
18” and 24” are the most common lengths, and here are some solid options:
Harbinger - 18” (these are what I have)
Rogue - 18”
Stoic - 24” (also available in 36”)
Pioneer - 24” and 36”
Lifting Straps
Straps (not to be confused with wraps) are very useful for pulling movements such as deadlifts, rows, and possibly even snatches (don’t ever use them for cleans - it’s a good way to break a wrist).
When you start training, perform all of your deadlift work sets with either a hook grip or a mixed grip (and chalk, of course). Over time, however, you’ll find that straps can be a useful tool when training the pulls.
You can easily make your own straps in about 2 minutes, and we cover that in the video below (these are the straps that I use and that we make for our members).
If you prefer to buy your straps instead of making them yourself, IronMind provides some good options:
Here’s a quick video that covers how to use straps:
A final note on straps - don’t purchase or use cloth straps. They will eventually tear, and it will inevitably happen at a very unfortunate moment.
Fractional Plates
You’ll want to make smaller jumps on the press and the bench press over time, i.e., smaller than the typical 5 lb jump permitted by two 2.5 lb plates. Females and older lifters will also want to make smaller jumps on the squat and deadlift, and such increments are also useful for the Olympic lifts.
With this in mind, get yourself a set of fractional plates. We cover this more in the video below:
We have several sets of the 44Sport fractional plates (click here) at Testify, and they are used daily. They are a solid option, but there are many other choices out there as well.
Chalk
If you train, use chalk. Chalk absorbs the natural moisture and oils of your hands (and that of whatever doofus used the bar before you at the commercial gym) so that you have better friction - much better friction - between you and the barbell.
If you deadlift without chalk, stop kidding yourself. You’re not training - you’re just wasting time in the gym.
If your gym doesn’t provide chalk, bring your own. If your gym doesn’t allow chalk, sneak it in anyway or find another gym. It’s that important. The difference between chalk and no-chalk on your deadlift may well be over 100 lb.
We use Spider Chalk (click here) at Testify as the blocks are very dense and remain intact longer than other brands. If you need to be sneaky about your chalk use, I’d recommend liquid chalk (click here).
Training Log
Your training log is your most important piece of equipment.
Everything else - shoes, belt, wraps, barbell, etc. - can be replaced, but your training log contains your personal training history. It’s the one thing that can’t be replaced.
Because your log contains your history and thus where you’ve been (in the training sense), it’s also the guide to where you want to go.
A simple composition notebook will serve you very well (click here), and below are two articles and a video to get you started on properly keeping a training log.
As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.
-Phil
PS: Whenever you want even more Testify in your life, here are some free resources:
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