Your Safety Squat Bar vs PL Squat Numbers?

I just want to add that some people accidentally make the lift harder than it needs to be. There was a cue which was popular very recently: push up on the handles as you come out of the hole.

On most bars, this will rotate the weight even further forward at the weakest part of the lift making it a total bitch. I tried this once and it felt a good 50lbs heavier than what was loaded.

It is a simple way to increase the difficulty of the lift though

I heard that pushing up on the handles makes it easier. In a video by Brian Alsruhe, he says that that doing so defeats the purpose of using the SSB and turns it into a low bar.

I’m sure it depends on the type of SSB too. My gym has the Rogue SSB1 and the Kabuki Transformer, but I prefer the rogue SSB1 because it has less moving parts.

440 v 505

Just to add to this, I recently chose SSB to max out on for a ME Lower day, and was really disappointed, but I think I figured why.

My conventional back squat is about 395 (I’m rounding up from kgs).

So I maxed out on SSB and only got 325, so that is an 18% difference, on the higher end of 10-20%.

And I honestly think that maxing out with the SSB sucks because the way the weight sits on you, all around you with the pads and to the side of you, it really presses and pushes down on you.

Like for me 400lbs of straight bar squat weight is ok sitting on my back. 400lbs of SSB weight is like, Jesus Christ feels like a freaking house on my back.

So I reckon for sets of 10 or whatever, the difference might be more like 10% at most, but the heavier it gets, I’m losing ground and going up towards 20% as I go into singles, doubles, triples.

Also factor in I haven’t done SSB for 2-3 months, but I really think it’s to do with how it presses down on you in such a concentrated fashion.

I was so disappointed that I added in a set of conventional straight bar squats into the session that weren’t supposed to be there, and hit 315 for a set of 10 just to make myself feel better, and this was after that 1RM SSB and also some supinated snatch grip scrape the rack-rack pulls (these freaking exercise names lol) so I was posterior chain fatigued.

Just my $0.02 for what it’s worth.

Thanks.

The heavier the weight on an SSB relative to your max, the quicker your upper back collapses ( generally ) meaning you fall forward and miss the lift.

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Careful, you’re heading towards Calculus.

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I find it’s the opposite with me, I only have trouble maintaining back position when I do more reps, never heavy singles.

If you haven’t done a particular exercise recently then you can expect to not be good at it.

Then you’re not going heavy enough or you’ve got a limiting factor on the weight used versus upper back strength.

Or it could be you cheat on the SSB, I’m not saying either of these is the case, just in general that’s how I often see it played out.

For me last night my upper back was not the limiting factor it was my right knee not opening up properly.

625 you can see my right leg not opening all the way but the weight moved relatively well. 655 and my knee wouldn’t open at all. In the hold my knee was inside my ankle quite a bit.

I’m sure it would be a different story if I was wearing a squat suit and overloading the top of the lift with chains.

Personally I find it quite opposite. I’ll do some overload SSB work where I’ll put on near my straight bar max and some heavier reverse bands. Having 600-700 lbs on the SSB always feels much better than same weight straight bar.

I think squatting style will have a big impact on straight bar to SSB max difference. More narrow stance, forward leaning squats are probably a lot harder on SSB than wider stance, upright torso squats.

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