Mark Ottobre from Enterprise Fitness breaks down the trap bar deadlift with Manami, covering stance, breathing, and the difference between high and low handles. Keep your arms straight, distribute weight across a tripod foot position, and wear flat shoes for stability. Mark once lifted 200 kg for 22 reps at a charity event.
In this video, we are going to show you the right way to do a trap bar deadlift. My name is Mark Ottobre. I'm the owner and founder of Enterprise Fitness. I am with Manami, and Manami is going to be demonstrating. So Manami, jump into the trap bar and let's have a look at the right way to do a trap bar and give you some tips and pointers about the trap bar along the way. So this is a pretty lightweight right now for Manami. She's strapping up. She probably doesn't really need to, but That's all right. She's going to do 5 reps. So right now she's using a high, the high handle of the trap bar. And the beauty of the trap bar, as you can see, it really is that hybrid of knee flexion and hip extension. The other benefit of the trap bar, unlike a deadlift, is that the weight is in the center of mass, is self-organized. On a deadlift, the bar is out in front of you and you can put it down. The bar is out in front of you, so you have to pull the bar in, whereas on a trap bar deadlift, lift, you're stepping into the center so that you don't have to coordinate as much of the center of mass. Obviously, if the, the bar is rocking forward, it's going to create issues. Now, this is what makes the trap bar a lot safer than a deadlift. Obviously, you can still hurt yourself if you do the wrong things. However, by most of the most people, this is going to be a lot, a lot, lot safer. The other variation that you're going to have with your trap bar is the low handles. Now, the difference when watching this— you can do another 5 reps— is watch her shin position and knee position. So she's going to get a lot lower, so therefore she's going to be using a lot more glutes and a lot more quads. See how she has to bend a lot more and to pick it up. So what I'm going to do, just make it a little harder for her and to exaggerate the range of motion, is— Manami, put this one down, bring it down. And what I'm going to get you to do for the last two, bring your feet a bit closer for me. Feet a bit closer. Now do it. So now she's really going to have to drive those knees forward and use a lot more quad engagement to get this up. So if you, if you're wanting to enhance the quad drive on this, definitely get the feet closer. Perfect. All right, you can put that one down. Now, some other considerations that I'll make on a trap bar deadlift is footwear. So on the next set, Manami, we're going to get you to take off your shoes. And the reason for taking off the shoes is we want to have a flat surface. The shoes she's wearing aren't terrible by any stretch. They're Asics. Asics are a good brand. They're not like, say, some of the Adidas and some of the Nike shoes that have a lot of foam on them, and they're quite, uh, wobbly and cushioned, far too much cushion to strength train in. But even on a deadlift, we want to have a firm surface. We want to have the ball of our foot directly in contact with the floor. Now, when we're thinking about the foot, we want to have a tripod weight distribution, whether on any deadlift, squat. When we're thinking about weight distribution, that weight distribution is we want to have as much weight onto the heel, and then thinking about the first metatarsal and the fifth metatarsal. So if you drive heel down, drive this part of your foot down, and drive the fifth metatarsal down. It creates a nice arc in the foot. So drive that all down for me. So when you're on the deadlift, I want you to think about getting in this position with your foot before lifting, and that way you're going to stay a lot more center. Before we do that, let's just chuck a little more weight on to challenge her. Not that it's going to be super heavy, it's not for the purposes of this video. If you want to see Manami be pushed, make sure you check out our channel and subscribe because we will have videos of Manami training where she pushes herself. But not in this video. In this video, she's just going to be demonstrating how to do the trap bar. So we're going to start with the low handles again. Off you go. We're going to go 5 reps. Yep, feet closer. I really want that knee drive to come straight over the toes. Really, let's get that quad involvement. So using the low bar. There we go. Nice breath. Good. And come straight up off the floor. Nice and easy. And you can see as well, she does a lot of really good things on this. She keeps her arms dead straight. She's locked in position. Her ribs are stacked on top of her pelvis at the top. She's locking out with her knees, locking out with her hips. The foot position is beautiful as well. Lock it all in. Just give me one more after this. One more, one more, and straight up. Beautiful. So that's, that's using the low handles. Now, if you're new to this, definitely shortening the range of motion is going to be helpful. So you are going to be stronger on high handles for sure. You're going to be stronger. And again, simple reason is it shortens the range of motion. So when we shorten the range of motion, we are going to be stronger, right? Let's just do one more demonstration with high handles. But again, of course, we don't want to make it too easy for you. So we'll put on our good friends, Elekos, make it nice and easy. These are 10s. These are the powerlifting plates. The only difference, we've got the powerlifting plates on. This would make it a total of 80 kilos. But you'll see this isn't going to be too hard for her because it's high handle. The trap bar is close to my heart. My record is 200 kilos for 22 reps. You can check that out on my channel. It was for the Good Friday Appeal, raising money. We raised $13,000 for the Good Friday Appeal. I did 20 reps in 2022, I think it was, dressed up as Hercules, and I beat that doing 22 reps at 200 kilos this year, 2024. So off we go, Manami. Get in that position. Do all those things right. Keep your arms straight. Keep your arms straight. Much better. Always keep those arms straight. Excellent. Good lift. One more. One more. Lock it in. Lock it in. Beautiful. And slowly down. So it'd be a good point just to pick up on that that set that you did when you made the initial pull, you pulled and your arms were bent and then you lock them straight out. So good point in place for me to just make sure when you're doing this, always keep your arms elongated, put the weight onto your heels, then lift. Don't yank because it will move the trap bar forward. 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