🏋️‍♂️ our 16 favorite trap bar exercises

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Here’s what we’ve got today:

• How useful is running for burning fat?

• The 16 best trap bar exercises

• Our favorite pre-workouts of 2024

Fat Loss

(Waist) Band on the Run

Ever since the Knight/Prefontaine duo helped to popularize running in the disco age of the 1970s, people have been bolting on their trainers and heading into the vast concrete jungle to get healthier and drop some weight.

But is that second bit really all it’s cracked to be? How useful is running, really, for fat loss?

In the article below, we take a deep dive into the facts. We look at how running can help you burn fat, along with other factors that might be helping or hindering your progress. Are you sleeping enough? Are you eating right? There’s a lot to go over, but by the end, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how running can help you lose weight and the steps (literal and figurative) you have to take to get there. 

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Exercise Tips

It’s a Trap!

The trap bar can sometimes be a mysterious companion in the gym. Rarely loaded, sometimes collecting cobwebs in the corner, the strange box-like contraption may seem more like decoration than equipment.

That doesn’t need to be the case for you anymore. With these 16 trap bar exercises, you may find it’s your new favorite piece of steel in the gym.

You can obviously do the trap-bar deadlift, which you may have played around with before, or you can use it as a makeshift frame for farmer’s walks if you don’t lift in a dedicated strongman gym. Shaped to specifically hit your upper back, you can also do all manner of shrugs and rows with the hexagonal bar. Take it out of the corner, find some free space, and take it for a test drive with the exercise suggestions below.

Supplements

Get a Boost

One of the most popular supplements on the market, pre-workouts often increase energy, blood flow, endurance, power, and even hydration. As such, you can find different combinations of beneficial ingredients (like caffeine, citrulline, and beta-alanine) in the form of powders, pre-made drinks, small liquid shots, and even chews and gum. But with the glut of information on pre-workouts from ill-advised TikTok trends (i.e., dry scooping) to fit-fluencers peddling that good-good on all platforms, it’s easy to get lost.

That’s why we here at BarBend have curated a list of our favorite pre-workouts on shelves right now. From all-natural to endurance to getting a mega-pump, every type of pre-workout is covered. All that’s left for you to do is actually train.

Everything Else

Small Is Huge Right Now

• While home gyms are exploding in popularity, the average square footage of a single-family house isn’t concurrently expanding. Instead of moving (and with rates these days…), consider investing in these compact pieces of exercise equipment.

• One kettlebell and a whole lot of hip thrust are all you need to work on your power development by perfecting the kettlebell clean.

• The upright row might be the secret sauce you need to slap some muscle onto your upper back. Here’s how to do it.