It was a fun week.  We took a short trip to the House of Mouse.  Now I know a lot of people don't exactly enjoy going to Disney World but let's face it,  any excuse to get away from snow and freezing temperatures is a good one.  It was a short trip, we left on Tuesday and came back Friday.  It went largely according to plan.  Our four year old son had a good time.  He was not impressed by the whole character thing unfortunately.  In fact he wept openly when they came to visit him during a lunch with the characters.  He did manage to shake Piglet's hand but that was about it.  We hit the Magic Kingdom and the Animal Kingdom and we went to Downtown Disney as well.  Overall it was fun but waiting for 2 hours to get on a ride isn't most peoples' idea of a good time.  We only did that once.  It looked like most people bit off more than they could chew based on how many exhausted parents and dopamine depleted kids I saw and I heard screaming by around 2 pm fortunately not from anyone I knew.  I also think we may have been the only people there who thought to bring sunscreen.  The hotel lobby looked like a burn unit.

Despite the fact that we kept it low key and had a good time we were glad to be back home.  As an added bonus, waiting for me on my front porch was my safety squat bar that I had ordered the prior week.  My motivation for getting this came from some stuff Shaf posted over on IgX and on fullkontact.com.   He had been working some timed squat sets with the bar.  The advantage of the bar is how the weight sits.  It is distributed more forward and also you do not need to keep your arms around the bar.  This allows for comfort (at least positional comfort) during long sets.  I figured I would add this because my limiting factor in long cycle remains rest position and leg fatigue.   I have struggled and struggled with optimal rest position and I feel it isn't there and may never be.  Don't get me wrong I rest better than before but I want more work capacity anyway, not rest capacity. Long squat sets should help.   Fortitudine Vincimus is the family motto of Sir Ernest Shackleton and it applies to this problem as well.  Jump squats are another way to deal with this but I was starting to get chafing and bleeding from long sets of this even when using a padded bar.  The idea of 275 lbs bouncing repeatedly on my shoulders compressing my spine in a semi-ballistic manner probably is not a great idea anyway. 

I unpacked the bar which had a lot of tape on it.  Very well packaged.  It is bulky and weighs 65 lbs.  I wasn't happy about paying about $60 to have it shipped but what are you going to do.  This thing wasn't cheap.  The whole enchilada was about $420 including the shipping costs.  I bought it from www.elitefts.com.
 http://www.flexcart.com/members/elitefts/default.asp?m=PD&cid=212&pid=10

I think New York barbell sells one for a bit less but I read somewhere that it was different and not as well made. 

Shaf had worked up to 6 min sets as I recall.  I figured I start with a bit less as it was my first go round with a new piece of equipment.  So after my long cycle work I loaded the bar with about 155 and did a couple 2 and a half minute sets of 25 reps.  It felt good, the sets were challenging but not bad.  After that I put some more weight on and tried some front squats with the SSB. I did two sets of maybe 6 reps with about 200 lbs surprisingly those felt great.  This is an outstanding bar for doing front squats.  Very comfortable, which is the major limiting factor in doing fronts. I had one of those manta ray devices for front squats and it was decent but I'll probably never touch it again after doing fronts with the SSB. In my opinion nothing beats front squats for overall quad development.  Regular squats are great but they involve more posterior chain stuff as well.  Unfortunately for me regular squats really bother my low back and I no longer do them.
I finished up with some dumbell bench work and some pull-ups.  I felt great.

Fast forward about 4 hours, my legs felt like they were filled with sand.  Fast forward to today.  They feel worse.  My quads got thrashed.  Overall I am very impressed with the bar, not because my legs go whipped but because I can really load them up without causing effort limiting discomfort in other areas.  It isn't like I haven't been doing much for legs prior to this either.  I just think longer timed sets of leg work are a whole different ballgame.   Going 6 min with this thing is definitely badass.  I'll work on it.