There are countless ways to wrap a knee. Everyone has their own style that works for them. For this video, I'm showing what has been most successful for me, as well as what has worked for many people I have wrapped at competitions or in training. I wanted to keep this short and sweet so if there are any questions or something you would like me to go into greater detail with on another video, please let me know in the comments, on the Q&A, or through email at mdamico43@gmail.com.
Thanks to my training partners Andrew and Sev for helping me make this video.
Transcript of the video:
How's it going, guys? This is Mario D'Amico with elitefts.com here to teach you how to do a stronger knee wrap. In this demonstration I'm doing a PR, third attempt, super tight knee wraps. I think it's really important to learn how to do a tight knee wrap, especially for your training partner's sake, to help them hit a PR.
I've had the pleasure of wrapping plenty of teammates and friends in the past and a lot of them have liked my style of knee wrap even though it is a little more painful than most. It is a big pet peeve of mine when I'm getting wrapped for a heavy squat and someone wraps me like a prepubescent teenager. If I don't want to punch you in the face during my wrap, it's not tight enough. Like I said, we're talking about PR knee wraps here.
I'm going to go through and show you how I do my knee wrap. Granted, there are a hundred ways to wrap your knee. This is just how I know I've got the most efficiency out of it. I've seen good success with myself and with my training partners.
The big key to a tight knee wrap is making sure you pre roll the wrap as tight as you can. Keeping the slack out beforehand will make it not only easier on you but it will keep it tighter. You see a lot of guys that just roll it up and when they're wrapping they have to take a lot of energy to pull the slack out and then you see once they start to go around again, all the slack is loosened and all the efficiency of the wrap is gone.
This is hand rolled. A lot people have wrap rollers but I've seen a lot of times the wrap will get stuck in there, or the wrap roller will break, which happened at the last meet I was at. I find it easier, it is a little more tiring, but just do it by hand. You know it will be tight and be done the right way.
I always wrap both knees outward. Whether it has an actual effect on pushing your knees out, I don't really think. It's how I started so I'll keep doing it. I've had my knees wrapped both ways, where they've been wrapped on the inside, and I've squatted fine. It just doesn't feel as good to me in my head.
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I'm going to start the middle of the wrap at the bottom of the patella. I pull it tight and have my training partner hold it. Pull all the slack out to where it's not going to any more, and wrap it over. Make sure it's locked in. Then I go about halfway up on the next wrap, pull the slack out all the way. You can see with my hand here, I'm keeping slack out the whole time. Under here I'm still pulling on the wrap, transfer of hands, and I'm pulling back again. You can see I go halfway up again. I'll go about two inches above the quad and I'll do a fifth wrap a little less than halfway. I like to cover this one up a little bit more. A lot of the time what I like to do is keep the slack out the whole time. I'll make an X over the knee cap like that and bring it around, and around again. Usually right here I know I'm ready to finish. Pull it around. Having a pair of pliers can always help there.
Sev, you want to stand up real quick? Just try to bend your legs at all. So, he's pretty stiff there.
These are the EliteFTS Patriot Wraps (available again soon), which I think are a really good wrap. They're three meters. I think they're really good for geared lifters and a lot of raw guys use them too. These are more of a wrap where there is a little less slack in them, so it's more for the stopping power down in the hole, as opposed to the Metal Blacks, which I'm a huge fan of too. They're more of a versatile wrap because they're so stretchy that, if you're cranking that thing the whole time, I could probably get at least 14 revolutions around the knee. And you can cast that mother fucker and it will be tight as shit. So then on your warm-ups, it doesn't take a lot of energy to get a lot of material around the knee. Getting all that material behind the knee is really what you want, to get that pop out of the hole.
I would say just have your training partners tell you, "hey is that tight enough?" And if they're kind of a pussy about it at first and say it's too tight, tell them just to shut up, sack up, and do it. I was in the same spot the first time, but at the same time you've gotta find out what works for you. This is the best way that has worked for me and I've had a lot of people say the same thing.
Knee Wraps
Thanks Buddy!