 Question is from K Craig 12. What are your thoughts on trap bar deadlifts? Mark Ripito recently released a video talking about why the trap bar is a poor and unsafe substitute for the barbell. I love this video. He's so salty. I know I'm like, I'm, I'm, I'm growing to like really love this guy more and more at the, he starts the video up with this. This is a crap bar. For some reason, the military just bought a bunch of these. Yeah. I, I, I think it's, it's you, you don't, you should not compare the two exercises. You should not say to yourself, which one do I do? Because if I do one, I can't do the other one. I think that's the wrong approach. I think that's approach. A lot of people in fitness take where it's like, it's either kettlebells or dumbbells or barbells or machines or high reps or low reps. I think they all have value. Actually, I know they all have value. The trap bar has tremendous value on its own. I don't think it should replace a straight bar deadlift. But I think it has its own value. Well, and I think his argument was really that. Like he's, he was trying to argue how much more valuable like a deadlift was for these very specific reasons, which, you know, I couldn't really argue against that fact. But to your fact, to your point, like I totally see like a lot of value in the trap bar for completely different reasons. Well, you have to talk about why he made the video in the first place. He made the video in response to what the military is doing currently right now, which is eliminating the barbell deadlift and replacing it with trap bar deadlifts. And now, do you guys, do you guys know why they were? Do you guys want to guess why? I don't know why, but I have probably a lot of people were getting hurt trying to deadlift technique. Yeah. Cause a trap bar is easier to teach than a barbell. Of course. It just is. It's an easier thing to teach. The other part of it is if you look at athletic coaches, some of the best athletic coaches in the world, they do trap bar deadlifts. They say it transfers better to the basketball. For me, okay. So this is where I think we all kind of are similar campuses. I love the video though. And I agree with him that it's a terrible idea to replace the deadlift because to your point Sal, it is, it's a different exercise. It's a different exercise. It has different applications. Both of them have value, but to his point, and I agree with him that the trap bar deadlift should not replace a conventional barbell deadlift. They're different. I mean, they're completely different. In fact, they have very, they have, I think the trap bar deadlift has more similarities to a squat than it has to a deadlift. So it shouldn't even be called a deadlift. It should be more like a trap bar squat. At this point with that travel on the sagittal plane, like allowing for a little bit more of that, like you do see that in a squat. And that's what we have the squat. And so it's like, you know, I get, I get where he's coming from from a barbell purist perspective with that, but it does also allow. I mean, it's a different, you know, it's a different monster. It's something that I'm recruiting, you know, both anterior and posterior, like together. So I've done long periods of trap bar deadlifts. Um, when I was searching for that 600 pound deadlift years ago, um, I avoided the, the straight bar for a little while because I was overworking my posterior chain. So I picked up a trap bar and it was similar enough. I thought to prevent me from losing gains, but allow me to train kind of a similar, it's different, but a similar motion. Here's what I found with it. Obviously I could lift more weight with a trap bar. It's just, it's more of a vertical, I guess, lift my back has a little bit more straight so I can lift more weight with it. Um, and I noticed that it did strain my lower back less, but I did get a lot of mid upper back activation. So you load up a trap bar really heavy and you do some trap bar deadlifts, you still get some really good mid back activation. And of course it works the legs to get a little bit more quad activation. Um, I noticed with the trap bar, the straight bar. Now when I did that and went back to the straight bar, I didn't lose any strength on the straight bar. And then I was able to get my straight bar lifts up to the 600 pound target. I find them extremely valuable. I, and they're easier to teach, by the way, when you get a client as a trainer, teaching a deadlift can sometimes be very difficult. Um, there's a process to teaching it. And sometimes what I used to do is I would go, I wouldn't even go to the straight bar and go to the trap bar, depending on the client, because it was an easier way to train something that was somewhat similar. I also think that, um, I also think this is part of the problem with our space is we get different camps and experts, uh, in, in exercise and strength training, and it turns into this, uh, you know, intellectual debate over things that really don't fucking matter for 90% of the population. They really don't. It's, uh, and it's unfortunate that we, we get here and we get, and we rarely do, we rarely comment on this. I think Ripto's got enough, uh, street cred and, uh, we thought the video was entertaining. So the person who asked this question, they got us to talk about this, but we actually pass on a lot of these questions where people want us to debate, uh, another expert in the field that maybe said something that is counter to what we say, because we've talked about the value of a trap bar before. So I'm sure that's why this person brings this up. And the truth is it really, what it ends up doing is it loses the people that we care about most. Uh, I think the goal of Mind Pump when we first started this was to, you know, educate the people that are trying to get started with health and fitness and, and learn the proper way to get in shape and to learn the proper way to strength train the benefits of lifting weights and the things like that. And so this is a community that we're really trying to, we're trying to reach the people that are not going to the gym. I don't want to get in an argument with the fitness gurus that have been doing it forever and, and fight over. You know what ends up happening when you do this, when you debate what's better, trap bar or a straight bar deadlift, then you're gonna, you're drawing a line in the sand and the listeners or viewers or whoever's watching is going to then think, I need to pick one. Right. I have to pick one. Yeah. And the truth is they both have value. That's right. And that's sad because you're going to lose the value of the other exercise. They both have value. That's the real truth. And by the way, this is a strategy that advertisers have used for years. Pepsi and Coke did this in the 80s is how they got everybody to drink Pepsi and Coke and throw, not drink seven up and Shastan, all those drinks that they gave, they made people think they had to pick politics works this way. I have to pick. There's only two choices. One or the other. When we make this debate over these two exercises, which one's better, which one sucks, then people are just going to think, oh, I side with the mine pump. They said the trap bar, I side with Ripito. He says the straight bar. So I'm just going to pick one. And then you miss out on all these amazing benefits of the other exercise. The truth is they both have value. Yeah. I do appreciate like some of these old dogs, though, that, that like stay like they dig their heels in to like, you know, those like foundational things that like have been time tested, like over, you know, millennia in any different like culture, like, you know, dead lifts, like, like bench press, like the ones that like have worked like time in and time out and they want to make sure they keep the purity of the way that it's taught, you know, why the reasoning behind it, like everything is like untouched and I get that. But then something new, like the trap bar comes along and it's like, ah, they don't want to like change his heart. Well, Ripto's a smart, very smart dude. I'll tell you what, starting strength was the best workout you could get online before MAPS Anabolic. 100% you compared his program to all the other bodybuilding routines and there was a stark difference. I remember first seeing it and going, wow, this looks very simple. Yeah. This looks very basic. Yeah. Very simple. Follow it and you just you get great results. All these other bodybuilding routines are full of crap. It was he really made a phenomenal impact. It was his programs that got people to finally say the average person to say, Hey, wait a minute, maybe I should train on these core lifts instead of doing all those other fluff. Maybe I should train my full body, you know, a few times a week instead of doing body part splits. It was him. Well, and there's Justin, I'm with you. I can appreciate purists and the digging the heels in. But I think it's important as experts in the field that, you know, you're careful about what you dig your heels in about. Sure. You know what I'm saying? Like what you, what you take a hard stance on of what's good or what's bad. Yeah. Because isn't he like anti-mobility too? Oh, he is. Yeah, I'd have to dig into that. I'm not sure about that. All right, well, I mean, that wouldn't surprise me again. Like I said, I appreciate that they exist because they're on a spectrum. You know, like for me, it's like I, I, I can then like kind of make my own decision accordingly. Like I know where he stands on like something else that's going to come out and it'll put, present an argument that I'm going to think about. Well, and I also think that we're speaking to different communities. Yeah. I mean, if I, I side with him, if I'm talking to a bunch of people, just pure strength, yes, driven people, strength training athletes that want to be strong as fuck. And that's why they follow my channel. And that's what they're interested in. And I catch when that people are stopping doing conventional deadlifts to do trap bar deadlifts because it's fucking easier. And so they're choosing to go that path. I would, I would dig my heels in the same way and say the same thing about the trap bar. But mine pump isn't that we're not speaking to just a strength community. We have a plethora of all different types of people that are trying to get into fitness. We have everything from super advanced experts and strength athletes to the total beginner novice person who is clueless about strength training. And the last thing I want to do is to get into these crazy debates. Maybe when we first started, we would get, we probably, I think, entertain some of these conversations because it was good for us to gain, to gain some traction that people could hear us intelligently debate or argue points like this. But I don't know, I'm very careful about it now because I don't think it's- Oh, we pre-screen it now because it's like if it doesn't hold any value to your average person, typically we don't even really want to discuss it. Yeah, well, and that all being said, look, here's the deal with the trap bar. I think it's got a lot of value. I think we all think that. I think using it in your routine on a semi-regular basis is a good idea. You'll notice gains in your glutes, your hamstrings, you'll get some good trap activation, some good mid-back activation from it. Great for strengthening your grip. Great for athletes. It's great. It's phenomenal for athletes. In fact, I've seen athletes train explosiveness with weights with the trap bar more effectively than other methods, other barbell and barbell. You look at Max Marzell, you look at Corey Schlesinger, you look at Paul Favre, it's all good, great friends of ours who are some of the best athletic coaches in the space. All of them utilize the trap bar. Yeah, they have great points for it.