Thor, my ten-year-old trap bar

I got all nostalgic and decided to profile one of my favourite pieces of equipment. This is my ten-year-old trap bar, affectionately named Thor. I started building it in October 2015 and wrapped up by December 2015.

I think it has aged really, really well. And that’s because of a few design and build quality choices we made. We being me and my then welder.

Here’s a rundown.

1. The sleeves are solid 50 mm diameter stainless steel rods. They are beefy.

2. The octagon frame is made out of 100 mm by 40 mm sections with 3 mm thick walls. The welder wasn’t messing around either. He cross-cut the sections with great precision and welded them into an incredibly robust frame. The end pieces had holes drilled for the sleeves to pass through. The sleeves were then welded onto a cross section running across the inside of the frame. That cross section supports both the sleeve and the frame. The end pieces gusset the sleeve as well. No shortage of support. We’ve loaded this bar to 210 kg with no flex.

3. The entire unit weighs 47 kg. It is insanely overbuilt. It stemmed from a stupid philosophy that if the bars were heavy enough, we could make do with fewer plates in the gym. Needless to say, upper management has since reversed course on that line of thinking.

4. The handles are knurled 28 mm rods. Having watched Objectified too many times, there are no markings or interruptions on the bar. The user has to use intuition to understand that the middle of the handle runs in line with where the sleeve attaches to the cross section.

5. There’s a washer on the sleeve. It acts as a stopper and creates room to rack the bar. That was a criticism of a lot of trap bars back then — they weren’t rackable.

All round, the design has aged well. I really can’t believe we made this ten years ago. It looks just as good as the day it was built. It handles really well.

And I can’t think of anything I would change on it. Which is strange, since I have a compulsive need to iterate on everything we make.

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