HOW TO WRAP YOUR THUMBS

In this post you´re going to know how, why, and when to use a thumb wrap for pulls. There's a million different ways to tape your thumb. I'm going to show you the way that Rusty, coach at the Wichita Falls Athletic Club, likes to do it and when he likes to do it. This is pretty simple stuff. It's not rocket science, but there's a few things that you might want to consider whenever you decide to tape your thumbs.

First off is you want to have the right tape, and the right tape is the stretchy tape. You don't want to use something like medical tape or anything that doesn't have that stretch because what you're going to do is cut the circulation off your thumb. If you get it tight enough and you wrap from the base all the way to the tip, you'll push blood up there and it will hurt whenever you actually do your hook grip. So, you'll want the right type of tape and this is the stretchy tape.

Whenever he's doing it, coach Rusty likes to start at the bottom. You don't need a whole lot, and you don't need to do this tight. Go ahead and give yourself a little bit of room. With two turns around the thumb, Rusty's pretty much at as much tape as he needs. Then, he likes to kind of tear it at the top right there. And then, he puts it on the top of his thumb. The reason why he does that, and the reason why he's putting it towards his fingers, is so whenever he actually grabs his hook grip, he's pulling with the tape. If you flip it the other way around where the end of the tape is facing you, when you're doing your hook grip, you'll start to actually peel the tape back. You don't want that. Coach Rusty doesn't have a whole lot of tape. He doesn't have it rolled over and over and over again. He can still move his thumb. He can grab his hook grip. So this is the way that he likes to tape his thumb.

Now, when does coach Rusty like to tape his thumb? Honestly, he doesn't. He hardly ever tape his thumbs. If you're doing hook grip on deadlift and doing like cleans on your light pull day like you should be doing, you probably don't really need to tape your thumbs. If you just continue to practice your hook grip, your thumbs, like everything else, will adapt to the stress and it won't hurt. Coach Rusty's been pulling with hook grip for 15-20 years now and he doesn't have pain in his thumbs anymore. But if you are doing a lot of Olympic lifting, then you probably will have to tape your thumbs from time to time. According to coach Rusty, he still would pull without tape as much as you can, but whenever he was training for Olympic meet, he was doing Olympic lifts four days out of the week. He was practicing his Olympic lifts after every single training session and eventually you can wear the skin off your thumbs and they can get a little bit raw. That's the only time that he would tape them, so he could heal up from that. And even then, it was very rare whenever he would tape them.

So it's a simple concept. Just tape your thumb if the skin starts getting raw. But for the most part you probably don't need to if unless you're pulling a high volume of Olympic lifting or you have a hurt thumb cut, whatever. Then tape. Use this method if you want. There's a million other methods from people that tape their thumbs all the time. Another thing is if you tape your thumbs all the time, you're going to be spending a lot of money on this tape.

Bibliographic references:

• Starting Strength. (2026). How to Wrap Your Thumbs [Video file]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/JExEO8d_Xnc?si=3ifoNH0yud_uSZD-