Squatting Without Balancing The Bar
Tyler Hobson grew up in Anchorage, Alaska. His experiences, education and his participation in competitive powerlifting led him to become the inventor of Pendulum Strength. He now lives in Conroe, Texas and continues to design the world’s finest exercise machines. Tyler explains, how he likes tension.
It has been over 30 years since I began my obsession with strength training and developing the “tools of the trade”. I have had the honor and privilege to work with some of our nations greatest strength trainers and exercise physiologists to develop new and unique exercise equipment.
In my many visits with exercise scientists and strength trainers I learned the importance of muscular tension or load on the tissue to cause growth. As a former competitive powerlifter I wanted to build a device that out squatted the squat. From my many meetings with experts I learned that if you didn’t have to balance you could push a greater load.
Bench pressing with dumbbells is more difficult than benching with an Olympic bar though the weight is exactly the same. Dumbbells are more difficult to balance. Bench pressing 200 pounds with a bar is much different then bench pressing 200 pounds with a 100 pound dumbbell in each hand.
Balance increases the requirements of antagonist, agonist, fixaters and synergists working together to stabilize, as well as, push the load. This means you can apply more tension to an object when you do not have to balance it.
Balancing a bar reduces the tension of the targeted musculature. Neurally, the brain is involved maintaining the stability of the object, as well as, lifting it. The brain has a lot going on. This is rather a simple construct as every coach teaches their athletes that lifting heavy loads requires absolute focus. If your brain is trying to ‘multitask’ you will apply less force to the targeted muscles.
The triggering mechanism for muscular growth is load or tension. Load and tension are the same words to the molecular mechanoreceptors that trigger protein synthesis. So, I built a device that keeps tension optimal.
The Pendulum Squat Pro was designed to allow you to squat with the exact form as a barbell squat with the removal of the balance issue. When you use the Pendulum Squat Pro you immediately understand that squatting with a barbell is easier on your legs.
To make things more extreme, I added a floating yoke to keep the muscles loaded as the leverage was changing. The tension is incredible.
When you train on the Pendulum Squat Pro I promise you, you will rethink the barbell squat. This will cause a lot of tension about your thoughts on squatting with barbells…. so much so…. you will need to Get Strong about how you view exercise.
