Quote Originally Posted by BOSS Check Out Post
Even though I mostly pull without straps, they're very much a necessity. The fact of the matter is if you want to be very good at deadlifting you need to do a lot of it. What isn't apparent to everybody is that when you're grip isn't failing but is just barely secure, is that you can't pull as forcefully. Straps mean you can overload both the weight and more importantly, the volume. Like I said, you must do a lot of deadlifting. It's not smart to shred your hands just to do it--it'll only reduce the volume you do the subsequent workouts
Amen. I ran into problems at one meet because I did an entire training cycle with straps as I always have, and then at the competition my grip wasn't as strong. Before I had always gotten away with it because I did hundreds and hundreds of pull up variations a week, but for this comp I stopped doing pullups in an effort to get my bench up a little bit more. I never realize the effect that the pullups had on my grip...taking them out was disasterous. So that's one thing to think about as well... get your grip work in somewhere.
Pete deadlifts with straps most of the time but then he does a ton of grip work elsewhere in his training. for example.