Grip strength is a very important component of overall strength: you can only lift what you can hold onto and greater recruitment of the muscles in the hands means greater muscle recruitment throughout the rest of the body. For these reasons, fat barbells are a staple of strongman training and are enjoying a resurgence in a wide range of athletic disciplines.
One of the great benefits of the fat bar is that allows you to train grip during barbell lifts that will benefit from increased grip strength, rather than training grip in isolation. Moving weight with a fat bar will also have very good carryover to other implements that don't allow a closed grip, such as atlas stones.
Adam Glass, a man with world class grip strength, has this to say about training grip strength: "if you train with a fat bar you will probably not need much else, except of course for the motor miracle of pinch lifting." You can read more on this here.
The guys at EliteFTS are also big fans of the fat bar, listing the pros and cons of fat bar training:
PROS
1) Unparalleled Grip Training and Benefits
2) Deloading the Shoulders and Elbows
3) Shoulder Stability
4) Arm Pump
5) Sports Strength & Conditioning Benefit
6) Recruitment of Central Nervous System Stimulation
CONS
(0)
You can read more on the EliteFTS fat bar training protocols here.
To meet the demand for this superior training tool in Australia, Iron Edge has produced their own high quality fat bar with the following specs:
- Diamater 50mm
- Weight 18kg
- Length 2120mm
- Sleeve length 390mm
- Chrome finish
For more info click here.