The elitefts Spider Bar is the sinister and villainous offspring of the elitefts SS Yoke Bar and the elitefts Rackable Cambered Bar.
To put it in a quasi-Marvel context, the universe is full of heroes and villains. Most powerlifters are familiar with the SS Yoke Bar and Rackable Cambered Bar as they are staples to the elitefts arsenal of specialty bars that are must-haves for the serious powerlifter.
If specialty bars could be heroes or the good guys, the SS Yoke and Rackable Cambered bars would fall into that category. They work to help every aspect of your squat game. When you put in the work, their unique designs help you achieve the squat progress you are looking for.
Now, if a specialty bar could be a villain, you can bet your monthly paycheck that the Spider Bar would represent the dark side of specialty bars. Why? Because virtually everything about the Spider Bar is challenging and difficult. But it is precisely that difficulty and challenge that makes the Spider Bar so valuable for your training. It has a challenging and difficult balance, challenging and difficult angle, challenging and difficult everything. If you are looking for easy, DO NOT get this bar.
Keeping with our heroes and villains theme, sometimes you can have two awesome heroes hook up and produce a wickedly sinister villain. For example, Ant-Man and The Wasp hooked up and produced an evil offspring, Red Queen (depending on which comic lines you might follow). As stated at the onset, the elitefts Spider Bar is the sinister offspring of the elitefts SS Yoke Bar and the elitefts Rackable Cambered Bar.
In essence, elitefts took a Rackable Cambered Bar and the padded shoulder and handle carriage from the classic SS Yoke Bar and welded that apparatus permanently into place onto the Rackable Cambered Bar. But when they welded it, they did so at an angle, and that angle changed everything that once was, as the combination of bars and the change in angle and balance created something very different and very ruthless.
Like the SS Yoke and Rackable Cambered bars, the Spider Bar does not have sleeves that rotate, and very unlike a traditional squat bar, the weights on the Spider Bar are placed on these non-rotating sleeves located far below the lifter’s shoulders, so this can cause a pendulum effect. This pendulum effect must be controlled, and in addition to the challenging angle, these variables cause instability for the lifter, which adds to the already challenging dynamics of this bar.
The Spider Bar is very unforgiving, and if there are weaknesses in your technique, be assured, this bar will not merely expose weaknesses but amplify them. Dealing with the amplified weaknesses will force you to divert your attention to these lacking aspects of your technique.
Villains are the antithesis of the superhero, but we need them in our world as they serve a specific purpose. They remind us that to achieve your goals, you must fight adversity and the evil that can come your way.
The Spider Bar is a necessary evil that stands squarely between you and the squat power you are striving for and the squat goals you are training to achieve.
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Some might read this piece as reasons to not add the Spider Bar to a lifter’s arsenal of bars and truth be told, for those lifters who come away with that feeling, this bar is 100 percent not for them. But for those lifters who know that “if it were easy, everyone would be doing it,” this bar represents the very villain they have been looking to fight, overcome, and reap the benefits from doing so.
The accompanying video features a few of the squatters at Monster Garage Gym, including 1,085-pound squatter and WPC World Powerlifting Champion Steve Brock, 800-pound raw squatter Bill Lee, 815-pound equipped squatter and multi-ATWR holder Crystal Tate, multiple time Masters WPC World Powerlifting Champion John Ponzetti, and others.
This bar is not easy even for some of these highly respected squatters, and that is exactly why they train with it, and exactly why we have this bar available for our lifters at Monster Garage Gym.
Wishing you the best in your training and meet prep. Ever onward.
Header image courtesy of David Grigg © 123rf.com
