Specialty Bars

Specialty Bars

Mike Rafferty

Benefits of Specialty Bars

1. Broaden the width and breadth of our strengths and capacity. Making us more capable, resilient, and less exposed to injury.
2. Reduce wear and tear on joints from overuse.
3. Increase the number of options we have for athletes working through injuries, joint restrictions, or needing to de-load specific planes, ranges of motion, or joints.
4. Reduce systemic loading on the system. Most specialty bars will not be able to be loaded as heavy as a straight bar.
5. Increase our options to overload or reduce loading on specific muscles, muscle groups, or joints.
6. Keeps training fun, the athletes engaged and learning how to adapt to new challenges and stimulus.

Science Behind Specialty Bars

Specialty bars are a fundamental component of the Conjugate System, offering numerous benefits to enhance training development. These bars are designed to challenge movement patterns and alter the percentages of the muscles being used. This happens by:

• Adjusting where the combined center of mass (CCOM = athlete + bar) is positioned on the athlete, i.e. raising, lowering, and/or moving it forward or backwards.
• Changing the lever lengths of the lift, e.g. Rogue 16” camber bar.
• Providing alternative grip options, e.g. Multi-grip bar.
• Changing the range of motion, e.g. a bow bar creates a deficit bench press.

These variations allow us to:

• Introduce new stimulus to training, preventing stagnation caused by the law of accommodation (adaptation to repetitive stimuli).
• Target weaknesses and limiting factors that hinder the progress of our lifts.

Prioritized Lists of Specialty Bars

We’ve created a list to guide you on which bars we prioritize for our squats, bench presses and deadlifts. However, it’s important to understand that we didn’t get our bars in this order. Some of these are more affordable than others, so the order you end up actually getting them in may vary. All are valuable.

Prioritized List of Specialty Bars for Squats

• #1 Safety Squat Bar.
• #2 Buffalo or Bow Bar.
• #3 16” Camber Bar.
• #4 Tsunami Bar.
• #5 Transformer Bar.
• #6 Manta Ray.
• #7 4” Camber Bar.
• #8 Zercher Harness.

Prioritized List of Specialty Bars for Bench Press

• #1 Multi-grip Bar.
• #2 Angle Multi-grip Bar.
• #3 Cambered Multi-grip Bar.
• #4 Axle Bar.
• #5 Buffalo or Bow Bar.
• #6 Boards.

Prioritized List of Specialty Bars for Deadlift

• #1 Deadlift Bar.
• #2 Buffalo or Bow Bar.