The Trap Bar

The Trap Bar is a very useful piece of equipment.

The Trap Bar (also known as a Hex Bar because of its shape) differs from a normal barbell because you stand in the middle of the Trap Bar and the weight being lifted is in line with your body whereas the barbell has the weight just in front of your body. You can use the Trap Bar for deadlifts, heavy farmer carries, and shrugs. Today I’m going to focus on the Trap Bar Deadlift. Before I explain anything, watch the following video and see if you can tell the difference between the two variations of Trap Bar Deadlifts that I perform.

If you were able to pick out the difference in how I pulled the weight from the floor you are correct. In the first half of the video, I have less knee bend and use my hips more. While in the second half of the video I have more knee bend so there is more emphasis placed on my quads than hips when pulling the weight from the floor.

If you couldn’t notice the difference in the video, that’s ok. Look at the following photo so you can see the difference.

Let’s talk about the benefits of using more hips when performing a Trap Bar deadlift. First off, most hockey players are very quad dominant. This means the muscles that make up the front part of the leg (quadriceps) are more developed than the muscles on the back side of the leg (hamstrings). When this is the case, it increases the chance for hamstring and knee injuries and low back pain. Incorporating more hip dominant exercises will strengthen the posterior chain (back side of the body) and lower the risk of injury.

If you think about the movement when performing a hip dominant Trap Bar deadlift, you are moving your hips in a horizontal plane even though the weight is being lifted vertically. When skating, we’re moving our body in the same fashion. Strengthening the muscles of the hips in the same way we use them while skating will increase our speed more so than performing the same exercise in a more knee dominant manner. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do knee dominant exercises.

Why would we want to perform the Trap Bar deadlift with more emphasis on the quads?

While I believe it’s more important to have strong glutes and hamstrings over our quads, it’s still necessary to have strong quads. Strong quads allow us to stay down in our skating stance longer so we can continue to produce long powerful strides throughout the entire game. Strong quads also help with vertical power more than strong glutes. Even though skating is done in a horizontal plane it’s still important to have strong quads as they do play a big role in the overall power development of our lower body.

But why use the Trap Bar?

A few reasons we’d want to use the Trap Bar over the traditional Barbell. If you have any type of lower back issues the Trap Bar places less stress on your lower back because of how the weight is in line with your body.  Due of the placement of the weight, you are also able to lift a little more as well produce greater a force when lifting the weight. This will help make us more explosive on the ice. While this is very important for athletic development, the Barbell Deadlift still has its place in your off-season program and you shouldn’t avoid using it altogether.

Next time you’re going to train your legs, try using the Trap Bar but make sure you know which area of the lower body you’re looking to develop. The difference between your setup will determine which areas you are targeting.