Building a budget home gym but not sure what to buy? In this video, I review home gym wrist wraps and even assess them for BFR training based on cost, effectiveness, versatility and practicality and tell you whether you should buy them, whether you sould consider them, or whether you should avoid them.
Contents
Cost
Effectiveness
Versatility
Practicality
The Verdict
Cost
There are many products available for home gyms and garage gyms, so it can be hard to know which ones you should buy. In this tiny room, in a small house in the middle of Tokyo, I've collected a lot of training equipment and built quite an impressive home gym. In this series, I'm going to review all the home gym products I’ve purchased based on cost, effectiveness, versatility and practicality, and tell you which products you should buy, which products you should consider, and which products you should avoid.
Wrist wraps. Most people buy them to stabilize their wrist in the bench press. This provides a slight boost to the amount of weight you can resist. But what you probably don't know is that there is another use for wrist wraps: blood flow restriction training. As it just so happens, the amount of restriction created by these wrist wraps is the ideal amount for blood flow restriction training.
Actual blood flow restriction cuffs range in price anywhere from 300 USD to 2,000 USD. These wrist wraps which are a perfectly suitable alternative for blood flow restriction training, cost me 980 yen, which is currently the equivalent of about 7.5 USD. That is much more affordable for a home gym!
For cost, I rate these wrist wraps five stars.
Effectiveness
In terms of stabilizing the wrist for the bench press, these wrist wraps perform that task adequately. They're easy to wrap, the material fits comfortably around the wrist, and the material is firm and prevents the wrist from moving. Proper use of these wrist wraps can increase the amount of weight you can resist in a bench press by up to 5%. That may not sound like much, but for powerlifting, where weight is everything, and even for bodybuilding, where any additional load you can place on the muscles is crucial, that is a significant increase. But what is arguably more important, these wraps are extremely effective for blood flow restriction training.
In blood flow restriction training, you restrict the flow of blood at the top of the limb. This allows fresh blood to be pumped to the muscles, but prevents the deoxygenated blood from flowing away from the muscles. Causing the deoxygenated blood to build up around the muscles while loading up the muscles with weight is extremely effective for hypertrophy, or put simply, for increasing the size of your muscles. When I started incorporating blood flow restriction into my arm workouts, not just I but also the people around me quickly noticed an increase in the size of my arms.
However, it is worth noting that because these wrist wraps are secured using Velcro, while it does make it easy to attach them and provides freedom in how you stretch and wrap them, it also means they can sometimes come undone, both in the bench press and in blood flow restriction training. When this happens in the bench press, it's a slight annoyance, but you can keep going and complete the set. When this happens in blood flow restriction training, it means starting all over again.
The whole point of blood flow restriction training is keeping that deoxygenated blood around the muscles. In order to achieve this, the wraps need to stay on the whole time, even when you rest between sets within the same cluster set. The wraps don't come undone very often, but when they do...
For effectiveness, I rate these wrist wraps 4.5 stars.
Versatility
As we've already established, wrist wraps are great for both the bench press and blood flow restriction training. That's pretty versatile. But it is worth noting that the exercises you can do in blood flow restriction training are limited. The wraps need to stop the blood from flowing away from the target muscles and this can only be done by attaching the reps at the top of the limb. That means for other muscle groups like the shoulders, chest, back, abs and glutes, actual blood flow restriction training is not possible.
For versatility, I rate these wrist wraps four stars.
These wrist wraps are both compact and light, making it easy to store them at home and easy to put them in a bag and take with you. This is especially useful when you're traveling and you don't have access to heavy weights. For blood flow restriction, you only need light weights. In fact, you can't use heavy weights in blood flow restriction training - it’s just too heavy.
About one third of the weight you normally lift is ideal for doing blood flow restriction training. This means that when working out in places like hotel gyms, which only have light dumbbells, if any at all, you can still do very effective training. It also means that bodyweight exercises, which are usually too light for experienced lifters, can now be a viable option.
For practicality, I rate these wrist wraps, five stars.
Practicality
These are the results for these wrist wraps, but now it's time for the big question: should you buy them, should you consider them, or should you avoid them?
These wrist wraps are a product you should buy. They're cheap, compact, light, and they can even provide a slight boost to the amount of weight you can bench press. But much more importantly than this is that they can be used for very effective blood flow restriction training to speed up the rate at which your muscles grow. Chances are you already own some wrist wraps, but if not, buy some now!
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