Crossfit has made the thruster a very popular full body movement. The thruster movement can be done with a simple pvc pipe, dumbbells or a barbell, however you feel most comfortable and where is appropriate for your current fitness level.
The Thruster develops both upper-body and lower-body strength as well as strengthening and engaging the core. You’ll use the power of your lower body along with momentum to drive the bar over your head. Once you have perfected your form, you can use a regular barbell if you have been using a PVC pipe or you can add weight to the barbell.
Transcript of Barbell Thruster Video:
One of my all time favorite movements comes from my crossfit days. It’s the barbells thruster. Now you can do these in a couple of different ways. What I’d like to start with is showing you very specifically how to do really good form because this exercise while, it’s really good. If you use bad form you could really get hurt. I like to start with a full bar bell. You can also try with PVC first just to get the feel of this movement. Go ahead and unrack the barbell. You want your hands about shoulder with so directly straight down and I like to take and you’re going to do a front rack, grip on this. Keep your elbows up high if you can.
So hips are turned under abs are tight and as you go through the movement you’re going to sit back into a nice deep squat. Bring your, your hips all the way down so they’re parallel with your knees and then you’re driving up with the bar. As you sink back down you come back to this low squat in your popping all the way up at the top for thrusters. So it’s a slow movement that really quickly gets your heart rate up, as you can tell. This is working your glutes, hamstrings, quads, but also your upper body a lot. Then you can rack it back to shoulder here. Let me show you that from the side too, because really sitting back into the movement is important.
Abs a nice and tight feet are shoulder width and you’re sitting hips back in pushing up as you go all the way up. A lot of people confuse the thrusters with a push press. When you’re doing a push press, instead of taking that deep squat all the way down, you’re just doing a small dip hips are under again elbows are lifted you let your knees bend just a touch and then you drive up with the bar. Come back down small drive up and that’s the barbell push press. A little different movement. Really more upper body thoug, because you’re driving here.
So if you had been trying dumbell thrusters, those are great movement…they really incorporate your whole body, gets your heart rate up. If you either don’t have a barbell or you prefer to this with dumbbells, you can do dumbbell thrusters and they’re really going to hit you in a similar way. What I like about dumbbell thrusters since it’s going to cause more core engagement because you’re stabilizing actually a little more shoulder engagement too cause you’re stabilizing using all those little stabilizing muscles because the bar is nice and firm the dumbells will go out on you if you’re not careful with it.
If you grab dumbells, it’s a similar movement this time, that’s the other thing if you can’t do a real good front rack with a barbell, grabbing dumbells is a great way to do thrusters too. Now you can have your elbows down, hold it more of a kind of a hammer position, when you’re sitting deep back into the squat and driving upwards…down and try to drive up. Sitting Nice and deep and then drive up. Make sure you hold your abs really tight as you push to the top and use your shoulders. Okay. These are dumbell thrusters.
Related Exercise:
Barbell Push Press
