Swiss bar - Nice tool for variety and lineman training

Tool for the weight room - Swiss Bar

   Variety is the spice of life, and the Swiss bar is a great way to introduce something new into your training.  Originally I bought one for my own garage gym to play around with.  After using for myself I decided we needed some for our athletes as well.
   Two benefits I found with the Swiss bar was that there was less wear and tear on my shoulders and it could be more useful in developing a lineman's punch.  The neutral grip has carryover to how we teach the punch by having thumbs up and trying to connect the elbows to the hips as best we can.
   We tend to use it more in-season due to the wear and tear on our shoulders from live football.  In addition to the variety the bar itself gives you, there are also different widths of grip you can take.

Movements we use with Swiss Bar:

1. Bench Press (video)
2. Dynamic Effort Bench Press
3. Floor Press (video)
4. Inverted Rows (video)
5. Bent Rows (video)
6. Curls
7. Shoulder Press
8. Curl to Press Combo
9. Lineman Punch (standing or bar suspended in rack)

You can do many more movements than these listed, these are just the ones we choose to incorporate into our training. Just a heads up for the players the first time they do bench press with the Swiss bar, it can be a bit more wobbly than a regular bar.  This not at all being a bad thing.  It forces you to be tight and stabilize while at the same time being more similar to a body than a bar. As far as % to use in comparison to a regular bench press takes some trial and error.  We based it off of 80% of our BP max. Spotting on the bench press with a Swiss bar takes some getting use too also.

Something I wish I would have known before purchasing these, is that normal collars do not work on these bars.  In one of the videos you can see how we got creative using red band to keep plates on.

Best deal I have found on Swiss bar.  Great price and as good as any:
Black Widow

Extra resources and reading for Swiss bar use:
Elitefts
Garage-Gyms
Mens Health