Join the forum discussion on this article, or comment below. - (3) PostsIt all started one day at a new training center I was visiting. This was an intense place, designed for football teams to do strength training. Far more advanced than my home gym (especially back then) and it made my regular fitness center look like a badminton club.
- Some exercises are simply better with a hex bar/trap bar
I saw these absolutely huge guys doing shrugs with these odd-shaped bars. They were hexagon shaped so the lifter stood in the middle of a hexagon hole. (See picture to the right.)
I asked one of them what it was called. “A hex bar,” he answered.
Ok, nobody won any creativity awards for that name.
But what amazed me was the range of motion it allowed for the shrug. I waited until he was done and sidled over to try for myself. Holy cow – I was in love!
See, I’ve always loved working my traps, and I love the way big traps look. But doing shrugs with a barbell had range of motion issues. Doing them in front hit my “jewels” and doing them in back hit my butt.
And shrugs with dumbbells are a real challenge because of grip issues. Once you start shrugging heavy, it’s really hard to hold on to those 150 lb dumbbells. (And forget about using straps with dumbbells. Not only is it awkward. You’ll also get made fun of like a 5th grader picking his nose. And someone might even give you a wedgie.)
Using the hex bar for shrugs was perfect – I could lift heavy, get a full range of motion, and grip issues were negligible.
Next Up: Trap Bar Deads
Feeling stoked, I moved on that same day to try an exercise I had vaguely heard about, but then saw a football guy doing: hex bar deadlifts (a/k/a trap bar deads). (more…)
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Continue reading about My Love Affair With The Hex Bar (aka Trap Bar)
Have you ever seen those different curling bars at the gym and wondered what they were good for? Yeah, you know what I’m talking about, one of the bars is straight and one of them has several angled grips, called the EZ Curl bar.
So which of these should you be using? Well, each of the bars has its own advantages. Let’s take a look at the biceps muscle group to understand what the advantages are.
Attachments:
Your biceps muscle group, as the name implies, is composed of muscles with two separate heads, or bundles of muscle. Your biceps attach to your scapula around your shoulders, run down your upper arm, and then attach to something called the radial tuberosity near your elbow.
The radial tuberosity is a bone that can rotate. That means that your biceps not only work to bend your arm at the elbow, but your biceps also work to supinate your forearm.
Supination: When we’re talking about the biceps, supination means moving your forearm so that your palm is facing you.
Pronation: The pronated position points your palms away from you.
Take a look at the picture on the left and notice where the bottom of your biceps attaches to your forearm. Your biceps attach to the portion of your forearm that is on top when your palms are facing up, in the fully supinated position.
That means that when your biceps are fully supinated with the palms facing you, your biceps are able to be involved most fully in your workout.
To get a feel for how this works, bend your elbow so that your forearm and upper arm form a 90 degree angle. Point your palm away from you and flex your bicep muscles. Then place your other hand on your bicep so you can feel it flexing.
Now, starting with your palm facing away from you, slowly rotate your palm until it is in the fully supinated position and facing you. As you rotated your palm toward you, you should have felt your biceps becoming increasingly more tense throughout the movement.
Anybody new to the gym knows how difficult it can be to make sense of all of the machines and equipment that fill the workout room. Instead of trying to analyze each of the different machines in the gym, get to know the free weights first. The free weights will give you the greatest returns for the effort you put in.
Barbells are probably the most basic instrument for lifting free weights. They can come in many sizes, but the most standard is called the Olympic barbell (the top bar in the picture above).
The Olympic barbell weighs either 45 pounds or 20 kilograms (44.5 lbs) depending on which part of the world you live in. It’s usually used for the heavier exercises such as squats, bench presses, deadlifts, shoulder presses, etc.
The smaller straight bar shown just below the Olympic bar is great for many upper body exercises where having the weight closer to your body is beneficial. For example, if you were doing standing bicep curls, you may find that having the weights closer to their center of gravity (and closer to you) makes them easier to control. (more…)
Continue reading about Barbells, Dumbbells, Weights and Plates
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