Training (almost) exclusively with fat bars.

kINGPIN · kINGPIN on Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:59 am

I have recently made a 7ft thick bar and a thick dumbell. I am toying with the idea of using just these for a while for bench pressing, bent over rows, 1 arm rows, shrugs. I'll be doing squats and trap bar lifts, with regular oly bars as well as kettlebell presses.

Has anyone here done this before? What were your results? I'm sure that it improved your grip, but what about the rest of the body? What sort of timeframe should I train with them, I was thinking of using them untill christmas but am up for suggestions.

Stew · Stew on Thu Oct 29, 2009 9:38 pm

I use my axle for about 90% of my benching, push pressing, powercleans, deadlifting as it seems to be more relevant to what I will have to do in strongman comps. It doesn't work for me on bent over rows as I use quite a bit of weight on these and grip goes well before my back which really defeats the point of the exercise.

For benching it helps you stay strict cause if you try and bounce it off your chest you will probably end up in casualty, if however you were going to do powerlifting comps i would stick with the standard oly bar as I take quite a while to get used to the oly bar again after using the axle for a while

kINGPIN · kINGPIN on Wed Nov 04, 2009 10:17 pm

I agree with you on the benching, it seems to have improved my technique since I have been using the 2 inch bar. As for rows I have taken a bit of a hit on that. I normally train pretty heavy (for me) but the thick bars have obviously dropped the weight a lot. I am sticking with it though in the hope that my weights will go back up to where I was with the 1 inch bar. It would be nice if my RT numbers could go up because of it too.

Training (almost) exclusively with fat bars.

Training (almost) exclusively with fat bars.

Training (almost) exclusively with fat bars.

Re: Training (almost) exclusively with fat bars.