Anyone use a safety squat bar and can reccomend one?
I own one which I purchased from elitefts. It is a great piece of equipment.
Thanks James.
www.davedraper.com has a safety squat bar handle that goes over a regular bar and it works really good. its like $120 . i made my own copying from drapers.
The handles that dave draper sells are not the same thing as a safety squat bar, the safey squat bar puts the weight in front of the body causing your whole back and core to work really hard to keep you from folding in half.
its a great bar to make your back strong, and keep you squatting upright imo
no doubt drapers isn’t as effictive as the real thing but the one i made does a pretty darn good job of mimmicing the real bar.
could you post a picture of what yours looks like?
wel icant post a pic but i’ll try to explain it to you.i used metal pipe 2" i.d. cut the top 3rd out of it so it will overlap the barbell.in other words the barbell sits in the pipe. i welded 2 handles on it at 10 " long the handles are 1/2 " metal pipe. the pipe that goes over the barbell is 16" in length then i covered the pipe and handles with pipe insulation and taped it up. i put a piece of insulation inside the pipe so if i got too far one way or the other the bar wouldn’t slide out.when i leave the gym i take my safety squat handle with me.if you can see drapers it looks almost identical but without the velcro sleeve. i made my own weight releasers also thick bars and dumbbells also. btw i work in a fab shop. i’m a pipefitter / welder.if you have ny more questions please ask. if you went to your local fab shop it would cost 1/2 the price to get this stuff made.i think i paid $.66 for my safety squat handle.
Does the safety squat bar work the body more like a front squat, causing the quads to become more involved than the hamstrings, as in the back squat?
The way the guys i train with and myself use the bar (we keep the back part of the yoke from touching our neck) it doesnt seem to change the emphasis from a standard bar to a heavyily quad dominant bar, it sure as hell makes your back work hard though.
I think one of the best benefits from the safety bar is that it engages your hamstrings more. A lot of the time when using a normal squat bar people will lean too far foward using mostly the quads/back. Especially yunger athletes.
“Leaning forward” works the posterior chain more than an upright posture. Compare a front squat to a good-morning and you’ll realize that.
The last few posts make it sound like the safety squat bar isolates the back more than the hip/quad/hamstring. So if the Dave Draper device keeps the back squat muscle activation the same, would it not be more applicable as general strength for a sprinter, if you had to pick between the Safety Squat Bar and the Dave Draper Top Squat?
if money wasn’t an object i definately would buy the ssafety squat bar over the homemade version. what i notice with the one i made it wants to push you over forward and you have to fight to stay upright.i’m very happy with the homemade version i got.
SSB - great if one has shoulder problems, also great for goodmornings if one does them. I am lucky enough that my High school has one.