Plenty of resources are dedicated to teaching you everything you need to know about using a barbell for strength training. It takes time, practice, and dedication, but if you follow these pointers, you will avoid some common barbell training mistakes that could negatively affect your fitness journey.
I am at O’hare airport.
O’hareght was delayed last night, so I had to spend an extra night in Chicago.
I want to share something with you that happened when I was at the airport this morning.
You know how it is to go through security at an airport, but today, I met the most amazing lady in security. She checked everyone’s enthusiasm, was excited to see you, had energy, and complimented everyone.
She recommended that I keep the clean-shaven look (I have not shaved in 3 days.).
After meeting her and talking with her, the frustration around my flight and having to get up at 3:30 am did not matter anymore.
I still have a smile about the experience.
Today, I wanted to start by saying:
I am down here in sunny San Diego with Travis. Travis and I are at a Fitness Mastermind right now, and we have a break in meetings, and during the break, we talked about barbell training.
I’ve been doing I’ve of it and enjoyed it. Since it is new to me, I made a bunch of mistakes, and I know Travis does a lot of the barbell stuff, especially if you have seen any of his Thursday throwdowns. The barbell is one thing that he uses.
I wanted him to talk a little about why he likes the barbell. Why utilize the barbell? And a couple of common mistakes he sees in his clients and customers worldwide regarding barbell training.
Common Mistakes in Barbell Training
Rick Kaselj: Travis, I will get you to introduce yourself and talk about barbell training.
Travis Stoetzel: Hi, I am Travis Stoetzel from TravisStoetzel.com. As Rick mentioned, I love training with a barbell. It is one of the main ways that I train. With many of my clients, we do so many things with barbells.
Barbell training is my favorite thing to do when I am short on time, and barbell complexes are my favorite, which is simply a combination of two, three, four, five, or even six exercises, all of which are done while holding the barbell.
For example, one of my favorite ones is barbell power clean and then into an overhead press.
You are taking two very pain-in-your-butt movements and putting them together so you can save a lot of time and get into fast workouts with this. That’s one of my ways to use barbells via complexes.
Don’t Neglect You’re Core
Barbell training is a fantastic way to strengthen your core. But it can be easy to neglect your core when you’re focused on the amount of weight you’re lifting. You should make sure your core is engaged at all times. This will help you avoid injury and make the most of each rep you perform on the barbell.
I can tell people try to go too heavy too soon with barbells. When you see those trying to get away, this often happens with my clients when they first enter the gym. I sit back and let them put the weight on the bar and see where they go on with it.
Squats
For example, the squats, everybody wants to squat a house. They want to throw on as much weight as they can on the bar, and they are not squatting down low enough, their back’s rounding out, they are not able to support the weight, or maybe they came to do a bodyweight squat correctly, so their mobility is off a little bit.
But that’s probably the biggest mistake as far as barbell training goes. If there’s too much, there’s too early definitely with squats and deadlifts and different lifts like that, so that ‘typically that’s seen with that.
Rick Kaselj: Yeah, and I know definitely with myself when I started when you go into the movements, you think you are doing a perfect job. But getting some sessions or feedback from someone else on how it looks was super helpful. Because in my brain, I am like an Olympic lifter doing a perfect job, but when you look at it when someone records it, you see “okay, I need to work on that” or “I got to avoid that.”
Working with a “Barbell Complex
Working with a barbell complex is great because you can get a lot of results from them. You can also really screw things up.
Travis Stoetzel: Yes. When it comes to those barbell complexes, what you want to ensure before you start doing them is that it is not a super advanced technique to use; you want to be at least sound with the different movements you are using within the barbell complexes.
For example, you are not very good at power cleaning; obviously, you will not have that within the complex. You want to get very good with the technique as far as those movements go before you start throwing them into a complex. It’s a great way to train.
Travis Stoetzel Experience
Rick Kaselj: So, Travis, where could we get more information about the Travis Stoetzel experience?
Travis Stoetzel: I have a membership site where they can find more about me at TrainAggressive.com. They can also go to my blog, where I post tons of different stuff weekly, new videos, new workouts, and different workouts at TravisStoetzel.com.
Rick Kaselj: Thank you very much for watching this video. Make sure to swing by the blog and take a look, and you can enter your injury, and there’s probably a good chance that I have a video or an article on what you can do about it.
Also, if you are watching this on YouTube, head above and subscribe to this channel, and you will get more videos like this. So this is Rick Kaselj from sunny San Diego saying take care and bye-bye.
Yes, you are awesome.
Thank you for joining me on this journey of pain and injury-free life that is full of fun, memories, health, and life.
For today, I have an awesome video for you. It was from when I was in San Diego in May with an awesome guy, Travis Stoetzel.
You can check out the video here: Avoid this Barbell Training Mistake
Travis is my go-to person when it comes to hardcore training. Over the last few days, I have been talking about barbell complexes. I look forward to returning home later this week and doing some. If you are looking for more barbell complexes, you can check out Barbell Battlefield.
Rick Kaselj
