Tag: weights

Using a Hex Bar

Using a Hex Bar

When I moved to Texas about 3 years ago I left my squat rack in Michigan, along with a lot of my weights. I spent a lot of time doing squats with no weights except for my body weight, and while this maintained my quads, hamstrings, and glutes I was looking for ways to add resistance. I tried dumbbell squats and they are at best awkward, so I abandoned that idea. I don’t have room for another squat rack in my game room upstairs so I did a little searching and found this thing called a Hex Bar. I looked into what you could do with this bar and found that it really is good for two exercises, including a squat/dead-lift and shrugs. The two pictures below give you an idea of what the bar and the squat/dead-lift look like in action.

hex bar squat starting position
hex bar squat ending position

I found that the squatting exercise is really a combination of squatting and doing a conventional dead-lift. The bar itself weighs 50 pounds so even if you only load it up with a couple 25 pound Olympic plates you have 100 pounds of resistance to work with. One of the things I like about this type of bar is that you can put a lot of weight on it and you don’t need to lift it over your head like a conventional barbell. It is also a great space saver for those of us with limited room for equipment. Does it work? In my experience it worked my quads, hamstrings, glutes, and lower back to some degree. I noticed that my legs and glutes were pretty sore for a couple days following a workout with the Hex Bar, so yes it really works.

To put less strain on your lower back and more focus on your quads and hamstrings don’t go all the way to the floor on when you are coming down for the next repetition. It also does a great job if you want to do shrugs. So if you have limited space and want to give your legs and traps a great workout the Hex Bar is definitely worth looking into. You can pick one up for around $100 – $150, plus you will need some Olympic weights to load on the bar. Here is a short video to give you an idea on how to perform the squat/dead-lift correctly with the Hex Bar:

Just What is Progressive Resistance?

strength training deadlift

Anyone who does strength training has heard the term “progressive resistance”, and most of the experienced weight training folks have a pretty good idea of what it means.  In its simplest form it means to add resistance or intensity either to each workout or periodically.  Three examples include:

  1. Adding a repetition to your set – so this week I did 9 reps instead of 8 last week.
  2. Maybe you added a another set – this week I did 3 sets instead of 2 last week.
  3. Adding weight – I added 5 pounds to my curl bar, or 10 pounds to my bench press
This is not me
This is not me

So why do I care about progressive resistance?  The answer is really pretty simple in that muscles will not grow unless they can be stimulated beyond the capacity that they are accustomed to.  Adding repetitions to sets, adding sets, and increasing the weight you move all help to stimulate your muscles and they are forced to adapt.

Now as anyone knows who has been involved with weight training over a long period of time there are ceilings you hit along the way.  For instance you may get to the point where a 50 pound dumbell is too much for you to curl, where you have kind of maxed out on the adding weight approach.  A typical approach by most people involved with strength training is to do 2 or 3 sets with a weight that they can handle for 8 to 12 repetitions per set.  Once they get to 12 repetitions they may decide to start adding weights or optionally keep the weight the same and add another set.

So what about that ceiling that we all seem to hit in terms of how much weight we can safely hoist?  Well you can add more reps and sets, but eventually this to can come to a halt and with this approach your workout gets longer and more exhausting.  So here are a couple other ideas to keep pushing your muscles, making them work harder:

  1. Do each repetition considerably slower – this puts extra strain on the muscles without having to add reps, sets, or weight
  2. Spend less time resting between sets – instead of resting say 90 seconds drop it down to 60 and you will feel the burn

There are yet other ways to ramp up the intensity, but I’ll save those for a future post.  Let me know what you do to increase the intensity of your strength training workouts.

Namaste