Every now and then, a piece of training technology crosses my path that really catches my attention. When it comes to training technologies, their utility essentially falls into one of two brackets—either by filling a unique gap, enabling me to capture training benefits otherwise challenging to accomplish, or through making my workflow more efficient.
Tsunami Bar has been an incredibly useful discovery that has helped add to my programming by checking off a few birds with one singular stone. For one, I can’t think of another implement that’s quite comparable (and that comparison is what you usually see in a typical training technology review). Secondly, by both delivering novel adaptations while checking a couple boxes at once, Tsunami Bar is capable of both delivering results and improving programming efficiency.
What IS Tsunami Bar Exactly?
Without making this an engineering article, the most layperson’s way to describe Tsunami Bar is that it’s a barbell implement that intentionally allows for a strategic degree of bend or pliability.
This element of the bar being able to bend to an extent means the more juice you put into it from an intent standpoint, the more each end bends in an oscillatory fashion. There’s some level of overlap in this department from the old Earthquake Bars—although the Tsunami Bar adds to the motor control component by delivering on additional adaptations not seen in Earthquake Bars.
One can think of Louie Simmons’ oscillating kinetic energy concepts to picture how this works in some ways. In other words, working with a load that has perturbation elements to it or “live energy,” as some would say. Most reading this should be familiar with a more lightly loaded version of this with aquabags.
In this case, there’s not only the perturbation element that adds a layer of instability (for motor control and more complete tissue recruitment purposes), but also an elastic element as you have to reverse the bar in the opposite direction—more on these benefits in the next section.
Video 1. The Tsunami bar in action.
The company makes different bars that can accommodate different loads as well as different pliability degrees, but the Speed Bar is the flagship bar and the one I personally integrate into my work with athletes.
The ease of implementation is awesome here as there’s no software needed or technological barriers of entry. The bar is also 100% compatible with all known brands of bumper plates, so there’s no need to purchase additional accessories in order to implement the bar. The bar has appropriate surface changes for added grip as well as smooth sections—just like you’d find in most barbells.
The company offers different bars with varying degrees of pliability—the less pliable the bar, the heavier the load it can accommodate. However, in my opinion (unless you’re training for powerlifting), I’d rather stay to either extreme. For my more heavily loaded strength work that requires more control—say one of my linemen performing a typical bench press—I prefer to use a traditional barbell. When it comes time to capture the adaptations I’m after with Tsunami Bar, I’d rather go all-in on the motor control, speed eccentric overload, and elastic qualities promoted by the Speed Bar. I can see a need for in-between options for some, but for my unique needs that would be more birds, less stones.
How Does It Work & How Is It a Helpful Training Integration?
Getting to it, I think understanding the how helps us better understand where Tsunami Bar fits into the grand scheme of things, programming-wise. As I mentioned before, it’s not hard to grasp that a live load with a more reactive element is going to have a higher likelihood of capturing motor control elements and tissue recruitment than a more stable one.
Please understand, this isn’t an either-or scenario but rather a both situation. I’m not proposing you trade out your traditional, controlled strength work with Tsunami Bar. Rather, consider integrating this to tie the recipe together a la garlic salt, similar to how some coaches like to do traditional strength work and Olympic lift/power variations.
Speaking of both, I find that the Tsunami Bar helps capture adaptations traditionally exclusive to more friction-driven, muscular work (slow, controlled, loaded resistance patterns) as well as more elastic, reactive athletic patterns.
I find that the Tsunami Bar helps capture adaptations traditionally exclusive to more friction-driven, muscular work… as well as more elastic, reactive athletic patterns, says @RewireHP. Share on X
Video 1. Tsunami Bar pulse squats: “move with the wave, make it elastic, keep it elastic.”
I’m a big fan of the “reversal strength” element, if you will. The bar bend phenomenon means if I actively push the bar up during—say, a bench press—the ends of the bar keep traveling upward. I then have to decelerate and reverse the load, actively pulling it back downwards into position.
The same goes for the downward phase of the movement. The load comes down with such speed that I have to actively decelerate and reroute it in the other direction back up.
Thus, it has the potential (depending on execution) to turn traditional lifts into dual-concentric phenomena. This is similar to real life sporting actions, in which an athlete intentionally yields into a movement and concentrically explodes out of it.
At risk of turning this into a biomechanics article, I’ll just say that a lot of traditional lifts involve concentrically pushing a load in one direction and eccentrically fighting it on the way “down” the opposite side of the propulsion arc (think Bill Hartmann and Dr. Pat Davidson’s propulsion arc concepts).
But this concentric/eccentric distinction factor means Tsunami Bar offers something more akin to the overcoming/yielding, expansion/compression qualities seen in sport.
Additionally, this is all happening at an appreciable velocity compared to the way most strength work is executed. In other words, that means athletes are benefitting from a higher speed eccentric overload (as opposed to slow maximal strength eccentric overload).
How Do I Personally Integrate Tsunami Bar Into My Workflow?
Tying this back to the ground floor, in-the-trenches, applied-side of things, Tsunami Bar fills a few gaps for me.
For one, I find that it helps capture both friction and elastic elements, as I mentioned before. This means that I can concurrently have my athletes benefit from traditional elements of loaded strength work while also capturing elements of timing, impulse, slinging weight in a more elastic capacity, reversal strength/concentric-eccentric changeover dynamics.
This has implications for potentially making some of our strength work have a more dynamic or ballistic element to it, which could in turn capture some athletic qualities that transfer to sport (and which are traditionally more or less absent from the weight room).
Both those elements and the reactive element of needing to control a live, perturbation-heavy load means there are not just athletic benefits, but also rehabilitation benefits. Some are not fully ready to take the car out on the track when it comes to sprinting, jumping, cutting, and beyond. The further down the road someone goes in the return to play pipeline, generally the more athletic patterns they can be exposed to.
Some are familiar with these ideas of initially integrating high-volume, low-impact extensive plyometrics eventually layering in more intensive plyometrics (low volume, higher impact). Depending on the sport and injury, integrating Tsunami Bar into one’s strength training can actually check a lot of boxes with regards to motor control, more complete tissue recruitment, and more in order to help prep them for some of the forces encountered in sport.
That element and the full bucket of adaptations it helps capture means it’s a useful durability and rehabilitation tool in many return-to-play scenarios.
As far as specific resistance patterns I enjoy performing with the bar, I’ve found the most ROI comes from the Tsunami bench press (useful push/pull element), jammer press variations (ton of motor control and recruitment value add here), jammer row variations (for the same purpose), and lightly-loaded oscillatory squat variations.
Although you can certainly load the bar up higher than this, I generally don’t go higher than about 50-75% of what someone’s stable barbell max output would be. For a more specific frame of reference, I find myself using as little as a 25 or 45 on each side most often, occasionally doubling up with both or more for something like a jammer press if an athlete is strong enough.
Like a mechanical bull, the bar can be a lot for novice athletes—so, truth be told, it’s probably best suited for those who have something closer to an intermediate training age with foundational movement literacy and some weight room experience in place. That said, you can certainly set them up for success and introduce Tsunami Bar sooner if you:
- Choose the right patterns.
- Don’t overload the bar.
- Cue athletes to go at something closer to half speed initially.
The bar is lighter by design, so you’ll generally want to load the weight on the ground or with a partner to avoid the bar flipping to the side.
The Tsunami Bar is lighter by design, so you’ll generally want to load the weight on the ground or with a partner to avoid the bar flipping to the side, says @RewireHP. Share on XThis is more anecdotal than anything, but it’s worth mentioning that training with Tsunami Bar is also fun and engaging for athletes. It’s healthy for clients to crave novelty, and we as coaches are sometimes tasked with trying to check the same boxes as we integrate enough “newness” into programming, without getting too far off the reservation into novelty for novelty’s sake.
I slot Tsunami Bar in during rehabilitation phases and to occasionally switch things up for durability. Although it checks a lot of boxes, I would say its overall value is in adding more sports-like dynamism to the weight room. It’s not going to replace your agility work and plyometrics (nor would the creators want you to throw those things out)—nor is it going to replace most of your free weight work. However, I can certainly see it taking over the strength-speed side of the weight room traditionally reserved for Olympic Lift variations and traditional patterns.
We as coaches are sometimes tasked with trying to check the same boxes as we integrate enough “newness” into programming, without getting too far off the reservation into novelty for novelty’s sake, says @RewireHP. Share on XCustomer Experience
Speaking of the creators, I cannot say enough good things about the Tsunami Bar team. I think I can speak for all of us coaches when I say the tech companies that come in and try to disrupt fitness or performance generally miss their mark. For most of us, it’s not about being unwilling to embrace innovation so much as it is about the proposed innovations adding complexity while not adding enough R.O.I. to justify said complexity.
With Tsunami Bar, you not only don’t have to worry about that—you can be confident the tech was designed by coaches for coaches, as their team is made up of a diverse group of engineers, researchers, applied physicists, and coaches who are still in the trenches to this day. They are also an education-first company whose concepts involve the entirety of the training process—not just their own products in a salesy capacity. They not only conduct seminars and host ever-growing online educational content, they’re also quite accessible should you ever have any questions on the programming side of things. A+ and class acts in this department, for sure.
With Tsunami Bar, I can be confident I’m giving athletes something they enjoy while also adding something in that’s helping me accomplish everything I need to do on the back end. Training with the implement is such a unique felt sensory experience that at the very least I recommend coaches go try the bar and see what it’s like for themselves. You just might find it helps fill in some gaps in training and deliver some useful adaptations in your athletes.
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