Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar Review – 2024

Last updated on November 25th, 2024 at 01:18 pm

Today, today we are looking at the Prime Fitness Super Squat bar. This might be the most requested review I’ve had in a long time. This bar dropped in late 2022, and so far I haven’t seen a whole lot mentioned about it from any of the other reviewers or anybody in the home gym space overall. Prime’s original goal was to make the BEST bar to squat with, specifically to developer the legs from a hypertrophy perspective. My goal in this review is to see, is the Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar the BEST bar to squat with, or not?

With that out of the way, let’s dig in!

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Transparency Note

Prime was nice enough to send me the Super Squat Bar for sake of review. Prime also sponsors the Garage Gym Competition and has done so for many years. They have been a great partner and supporter in the home gym community.

They now have a good affiliate program and a discount code. Using these gives me a small kick-back, at no cost to yourself. This helps fund the website and various things I do in the home gym community.

As always, there is no commitment here other than for me to share my honest thoughts. But I like to be transparent up front so you know what we are working with.

Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar Video Review

Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar Specs

When I first posted that I got the bar, one of the comments I got was that it was pretty expensive. So my stance with Prime Fitness tends to be that Prime’s stuff isn’t expensive because it has to be. There are a ton of bars and options to squat on a budget. Prime’s equipment is expensive because of what they are trying to achieve. They make some of the best bars, machines, cable attachments and more on the planet. They are often chasing aesthetic perfection, performance perfection, and perfection from a manufacturing standpoint across the board.

The Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar is my second Safety Squat Bar type bar, and about my 10th specialty bar. Almost positive it is the most expensive bar I own, but it also has some of the most refined and specifically built specs. Most of my specialty bars are Schedule 80 pipe throughout, this one matches up closer to the newer bars on the market like the Transformer Bar and MARRS Bar.

I want to clarify though, what this bar is and what it is not. So this bar, when it was first teased, had some adjustable camber options. So, you could FEEL like you were back squatting, front squatting, and more. Ultimately, Prime dropped their adjustable design for the current version. So… this bar is NOT an adjustable SSB type bar. A lot of people believe that’s what’s currently released. This does not have any adjust-ability in terms of the camber. It is set to 1 setting and 1 setting only.

PRODUCT SPECS:

• Weight: 51 lbs.
• Product total dimensions: 87” L x 27” W x 9” H
• Camber Drop: 4 ^5/8” or 28^o
• Loadable Sleeve Length: 15 ^5/8”  
• Loadable Sleeve Diameter: 49.5 mm
• Shoulder Pad Grip Spacing: 11 ^3/4” – 24 ^5/8”
• Shoulder Pad Inner Width: 7 ^3/4”
• Adjustable: No

FEATURES:

• Weight Capacity: tested and approved for 1,000 lbs.
• Angled/elongated handles 
• Self-adjusting back plate 
• Cambered to the middle of the body
• Stainless steel has been applied to the areas of the shaft where the bar is racked along with the loading sleeves

Hand Crafted  |  Proudly Made in the USA

There are also a lot of view points that any bar that sits on your back with a pad and handles, is a Safety Squat Bar. You could argue that, but then I might ask if every bar that is straight is the same bar? You’d likely say no and explain how we have power bars, olympic bars, crossfit bars, squat bars, deadlift bars, and more. In the same vein, the Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar has a lot of the same concepts as an SSB, but differs from the majority of the offerings on the market.

THIS Is The Barbell You Should Buy For Your Home Gym In 2024

Much like how the MARRS Bar gets bundled into the conversation with SSBs. This bar, though different than an SSB, is going to get included in that same discussion. So it is NOT an SSB, but for sake of argument and discussion, it is.

One thing Prime Fitness let me down on with this one, this bar ways 51lbs. I know it is a little thing, but 45 or at least an even number like 50, please. 51 is just an annoyance.

What Makes The Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar Different?

Prime’s biggest change to the traditional SSB is the back plate and the less aggressive camber. The idea with the Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar is that when you pair these two changes together, you have the opportunity for the bar to produce a very upright posture without the athlete having to FIGHT to get into it or maintain it throughout the lift. This means you can focus on developing the legs as your primary goal.

The traditional SSB was designed on purpose to be higher and more out front so that you as the athlete had to FIGHT to keep from getting rounded over. This training translated into a stronger upper back for when you went back to traditional straight bar squats. So these two bars were developed for two very different purposes. Prime focused on making a bar that makes squatting an ideal lower body hypertrophy exercise. NOT to develop a bar for addressing weak points in the back squat.

Is one better than the other? Specialty bars were designed across the board, not to simply just be a different thing for funsies, but to address a certain aspect of your training. So a multi grip bar might hammer your triceps harder than your pecs and might alleviate strain on your shoulders. A cambered bar is meant to hammer the hips and your core and different things.

Specialty Bars – How To Buy Your First One In 2024

You need to pick the bar that matches your goals. Your goals should be the leading factor and why you purchase a bar or not. So if you are looking for a bar to hammer your upper back or to do things that a safety squat bar would typically do, this is not it. The only thing you’re going to get from this bar that a safety squat bar does is the handle aspect, which is alleviating the need to throw your hands all the way back, which is often a stress on the shoulders and wrists.

So if your goal is to develop upper back strength in the squat, you need a different bar. If you want to blow up your legs, we are in the right place.

Handles

The handles for the Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar are unique in that they angle OUT. The idea is that you can get as deep as you want and not run into your quads at the bottom. AND you don’t have to forgo the most comfortable handle position for YOU by only having short handles like the EliteFTS Yoke for instance. This is an attempt, again, to produce the best bar possible for squatting and developing the lower body. Full ROM is a key component of hypertrophy training, and missing that deep squat because the handles hit your quads isn’t a valid trade off.

In my experience, long handles can definitely get in the way of the quads. So the angle for the handles is a necessity. And in my time using the Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar, I’ve never felt like the handles were a burden. They aren’t too long, too short, the angles aren’t weird. You have options to fit your preference.

Aesthetics

Prime also always does a great job addressing some of the finer details in equipment production. Including stainless steel shafts where the bar racks, nice firm pads, and stainless steel machined sleeves that are ready for regular collars.

There is just a lot going on with the multiple pieces, bends, and everything the Super Squat Bar has going on. The way the bar changes back and forth between powder coat to stainless steel straight bars and curved bars overlapping each other. Even the back plate feels kind of unfinished with the way it has this wrapped piece. Overall the bar feels a little much. You can see where the camber attaches the bar has these kind of fat bumper welds and these kind of globby covered up textured welds as well. They just feel clunky. A lot of the pieces of the bar aesthetically just don’t really stand out in the way I’m accustomed to with Prime Fitness.

Storage

The bar sits differently in the rack when unloaded versus loaded, and both differ from a safety squat bar. This is largely due to the positioning of the camber and sleeves. You can see on the safety squat bar, the back bar is a straight line, and then the camber drops after the j-cups. But the Super Squat Bar almost has a drop vertically, which is where the bar sits in the rack. And then it has an additional camber to offset the angle of the weights to align with the body.

This first adjustment makes the bar sit almost upside down when unloaded and then go pseudo horizontal when loaded. Not only are you avoiding the flipping when adding the first plate, but getting into and out of the bar isn’t exactly the smoothest experience every time. Add to that, that since the back plate where the bar sits isn’t at the same level as the point where the bar racks, your J-Cups are going to sit several inches lower than any other bar you use. This makes for an odd re-rack out the gate as no other bar I’ve used is a similar difference between the bar on your back and the re-rack point.

Then I went to get it out of the rack, and boy, was that an exercise in creativity. This bar inside of a rack is a monster of a challenge. To be fair, I have a small 30 inch rack that makes things extra dicey. I mentioned similar issues when using the Kabuki Kadillac. But the way the bar tries to flip, rotate and otherwise twist and turn in the rack in your hands, especially as you move, paired with the extra curves and the long angled handles made for what I’m sure looked like a WWE wrestling match.

From there I went to store the bar. I’ve historically stored my bars against my wall in a DIY vertical barbell storage solution. The Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar tried to rip that off the wall… literally. I had to get really creative for a short period of time there before I ordered my 9 bar holder. Getting the bar in and out of my storage was a pain in the booty as the bar has to sit off the wall quite a bit. The 9 bar holder is significantly better, but still not exactly what I would call fantastic.

The Blissfull Ride Of The Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar

At the end of the day, the thing that matters is, do I want to use this bar in my gym over and over and over again or not? Am I going to keep it? Am I going to sell it?

When I first got the bar, I put it together, tossed it on the rack and gave it a run with a few plates. Immediately I could tell this felt different than my safety squat bar. The way the back plate sits with the arms you’re almost wedged into it. You’ll feel very locked in from the very first rep. Like I went from sitting in the car with a seat belt to wearing one of those 8 point racing seat belt restraints.

I am in it!!!

This translates to a very stable bar sitting on your back. Now, don’t get me wrong, you load up 90% of your one 1 RM and it still feels heavy. You can’t completely forget about your upper body. Like a belt squat, you still need to generate tension from your hands into the bar to stabilize your upper back. You still need a solidly braced midsection. It’s still freaking Squatting. Squats are and always will be a full body exercise. You load them up, you make them heavy, they get hard.

This bar does not change that, but it certainly makes some aspects easier. With the handles, I naturally gravitated to holding them lower, so I think this was a good choice by prime. They don’t get in the way of squats. I can even do Hatfields just fine. The combination of the back plate, the camber, and the handles certainly seems to achieve what Prime Fitness set out to do. Create a bar that was meant to develop your legs through the full range of motion of a squat without being limited by other factors.

I don’t feel rounded over. I’m not fighting a swinging camber arm. I’m putting the vast majority of my focus on my legs.

Overall Thoughts On The Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar

I like a simple, clean aesthetic for most things. This bar is not that.

Trying to get it out of storage into the rack set up is just not fun at all. Even loading the bar is a weird experience, and trying to get it on your back with the way the back plate sits is just different in a weird way that takes some time to get used to.

But I will say once that bar gets on your back, it’s fantastic. The bar is a dream to use for squatting. It does everything you’d want a bar to do. Alleviating the shoulder discomfort, sitting tightly and comfortably on your back, wedging you in so that way you can focus on the mechanics of your squat. Maintain upright position and hammer your quads and lower body.

This bar does exactly what it was made to do and set out to do. It’s just a little bumpy getting there.

You can see in Prime’s demo videos they use their bar in their own racks. Of course, those racks are primarily half rack style. So if you have a rack that is either bigger or you squat out of the front of it, that takes away half of my issues. You still have to deal with storage, which again, if you have a nice open space with a 9 bar storage, it’s not that bad. So if you have those things compared to my setup, most of the issues go away. And now you’re down to really just the oddities of the aesthetics as well as the kind of why does the bar flip and rotate?

I do think prime has some opportunities here with this bar. I think if they addressed some of the aesthetic pieces and how much is going on, I think they would be able to address some of the oddities and how it moves. And most certainly I think they would be able to address storage issues if they maybe allowed the handles to detach. If you look at the Bells of Steel SS4, they have multiple different handle options. This not only make it store easier because you won’t be dealing with this super long crazy handle, but you’d also give people more opportunities to do something different to their own liking.

I reached out to Prime Fitness with a few questions on the design and aspects of the bar, things like, you know, the different pieces and everything. The general answer for all of it was this is what they had to do to achieve the goal that they had for this bar. They were trying to make the best bar to squat with for hypertrophy purposes and this is what was born from that goal.

The Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar is like driving a race car. It doesn’t necessarily look great driving it off the track, getting it to and from is difficult, it is expensive. But once you get it on the track, taking it for a ride is absolutely wonderful. It does everything it’s supposed to do in the most beautiful way it can.

Other Options On The Market

If you already own a Safety Squat Bar and you like it and it does the things you want, it’s probably going to be hard for you to look at a 600 dollar price tag on a bar like this and say, hey, I need that. I will go back to my original discussion of what is your goal. If your goal is to have a bar that hammers your upper back to help you be a stronger squatter for say, powerlifting perspectives, this isn’t necessarily that bar. If your goal is to squat for hypertrophy purposes to develop your legs, primarily your quads, this bar does that better than any other bar I have used.

I wrote an entire article on the BEST Safety Squat Bars For A Home Gym.

Wrap Up

You need to understand what your goal is with implementing any new piece of equipment in your gym. You can’t simply grab a bar with handles and pads and think it’ll do the same thing as every other bar with handles and pads. Even within traditional SSBs there are differences in the camber and pad positioning that can take it from a more comfortable to a more daunting squat set up. So make sure before you buy ANY bar, especially a $600+ squat bar, that you understand what you are trying to accomplish with it.

If you like torturing your quads, the Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar is a stellar barbell. In fact, I have since sold my other SSBs in favor of keeping this one. And whether I use light weight, low reps, high reps, anything. The Prime Fitness Super Squat Bar is an absolute beast. It is enjoyable on the back, and straight demonic on the quads.

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