Trap-bar deadlift test
The trap bar is not a compromise version of a deadlift. For a field athlete it is often the better lift outright: lower spinal shear, far easier to coach, and a movement pattern that sits closer to acceleration than a conventional pull does.
The trap-bar deadlift is the lower-body strength test in the AFL and cricket batteries, chosen over a back squat for lower spinal shear, easier coaching at scale, and closer carry-over to acceleration.
Use high handles and keep them consistent — high and low handles are different lifts and produce different numbers.
The point of the test
Whole-body pulling strength — the lift with the clearest carry-over to accelerating.
Why it is in the Train Smart battery: Whole-body pulling strength — the lift that carries over to acceleration.
How to run it
High handles, flat back, drive the floor away. Work up in singles with full rest. A 3RM entered here is converted for you.
- What you need
- A trap bar (hex bar) · High handles for testing, used consistently · Full rest between singles
What is a good score?
We are not going to publish a precise-looking table for this test. Reported ranges vary too much with protocol, equipment, level, age and sex for a single table to be honest, and most of the tables in circulation for it are uncited copies of each other.
The comparison that actually changes your training is against your own last score. That is not a consolation prize — it is what the monitoring literature supports, and it is what Train Smart does: re-test every four weeks under the same conditions and let the trend, not the percentile, drive the program. The papers behind that are here.
What people get wrong
Most of the variation between two tests is protocol, not fitness. These are the faults that make one score incomparable to the last.
- Switching between high and low handles.
- They are different lifts and different numbers. Pick one — high handles for testing — and stay there.
- Letting the back round.
- Flat back, chest up, drive the floor away. A rounded pull is both a worse test and a worse idea.
- Bouncing reps off the floor on a 3RM.
- Each rep from a dead stop, or the number is inflated.
How to actually move the number
The trap bar responds well to moderate reps at high intent — sets of three to five moved fast — rather than to grinding singles. That also happens to be what makes it useful for sport: the goal is force produced quickly, not just force.
Pair it with single-leg work. A large trap-bar number with no single-leg strength underneath it does not transfer, because sport is played on one leg at a time.
The movements that build a trap bar deadlift 1RM
Testing tells you where you are; these are what change it. Each one carries the coaching cues, the sets and reps Train Smart prescribes it at, and ranked alternatives — and in the app the weight is calculated from your own last top set.
| Movement | Why it is programmed |
|---|---|
| Front Squat | Quad and trunk strength in the upright posture sport actually loads |
| Trap Bar Jump | A loaded jump — peak power output with no barbell skill to learn first |
| Romanian Deadlift | Posterior chain for driving legs |
| Bulgarian Split Squat | Single-leg power + change of direction |
| Weighted Chin-Up | Contested marking + tackle strength |
| Weighted Dead Hang | Decompresses the spine and loads the shoulder at full overhead range — the cheapest overhead flexibility work there is |
| Jefferson Curl (light KB) | Loads spinal flexion and hamstring length together, then holds there — the range you land and bend in, owned rather than avoided |
| Nordic Curl | Hamstring injury prevention — the #1 AFL injury |
More: glute exercises · hamstring exercises · back exercises
trap bar deadlift 1RM — questions
Is a trap-bar deadlift easier than a conventional deadlift?
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