When we make equipment or even dole out exercise recommendations, one thing we have to critically examine is the why we do things differently. Is what we are doing genuinely a well thought out pattern that produces useful outcomes and strength that translates well into everyday life and/or other lifts. 

This matters for many reasons:

Trainee time and attention is limited. We cannot waste their time with exercises that don’t add value or result in useful outcomes. They have to become more mobile, stable and stronger in positions. Their tolerance for harder positions has to improve. 

We put money and equipment behind the exercise and training choices we make. Lots of it. We do this to make it more comfortable to train. More comfort improves the odds of sustaining a training habit. And also be able to progress to more challenging variants of exercises comfortably. 

And our coaching culture prides and values itself on sensible lifting choices, self awareness and eschewing doing trendy or fashionable things for the sake of eyeballs or attention. 

So when we pick an exercise or do something completely different from the industry such as a t-bell deadlifts (2018), pull ups with different grip angles (2022), glute ham raise progressions (2019) or lever squats (2021), it’s not just doing things for the sake of doing novelty or eyeballs. 

T-bell deadlifts lend themselves to more comfortable deficits and the weight positioned directly inline with your midfoot is a simpler starting point. 

Different starting points for the pull ups can it make more comfortable for people with shoulder constraints to learn to do a pull up. 

Lever squats are easier to load up and scale than barbells since your spine extends a lot less to squat as you descend. 

These are the simple reasons we have for picking moves or doing things differently.