Okie Deadlift Bar

This is _the_ deadlift specialty bar to own. It's used by a number of powerlifting federations in competitions, and you will pull more with this bar, period. Just the right amount of sharpness to the knurling - it's a lot sharper than a standard bar if that's all you've used.I had one and used it happily for years, and finally sold it locally - it was spoken for very soon after I posted the ad - and treated myself to a brand new one, and I couldn't be happier with it. The old one developed a small, but still acceptable, amount of play - I had no need for a new one, I just wanted one to celebrate an upcoming birthday. Its new owner will, no doubt, get many more happy years of use out of it.

The original deadliftbar. “Only imitated never duplicated.” I love this bar. I even set the Hawaii state wabdl raw record with a okie. The deadlift bar really helps taking the strain off my lower back.Once you use the bar it will be the most treasured bar in your gym.

This bar is solid, minimal whip, and has amazing grip. This is used extensively in our gym and the members love it.

Great for deadlifts of all types, conventional, sumo, modified sumo, Jefferson to name a few exercises that I have used with the bar.

love it!

I bought this bar personally from Ricky Dale Crain (I live in Oklahoma so it was a short drive to his gym). This thing is made perfectly for one thing: DEADLIFTS - and literally nothing else.It is a tad longer than most bars, and is "whippier" than most - which gives you a bit of flex before the bar breaks the ground, and I've heard that you can use that whip to your advantage but I haven't learned how to do that.The bar is 27mm (thinner than most) to allow easier grip around the bar.The bar itself is bare steel and has been since the 1980's. I guess the collars are zinc plated to prevent rust and stay up with the times in barbell fashion, but he insisted that the bar and specifically the knurling not be coated or plated. This brings me to my next point - the knurling is really intense - like the sharpest I've ever seen. The bar will not slip out of your hands, and if it did, you might lose skin. I haven't found the need to use chalk so far (also I don't want to clean it off of the bare steel).Some cons: the bar has no bushings - I don't see that as a problem since I don't expect the weights to rotate in a deadlift, and I will not be using the whippiness of the bar for Olympic lifts. I would be afraid the knurling would rip my palms off doing a clean.Also, there were some machine marks and some metal turnings, but none of them gave me splinters so that was good.I'm not crazy about the maintenance of bare steel but I get why it exists.Basically, this bar is the gold standard for deadlift bars and I can't recommend it highly enough. It is the standard that other bars seem to be trying to copy over the last 35 years or so (Texas deadlift, Ohio deadlift, etc) and from my understanding, they have managed to copy the dimensions pretty well, but none have quite the same knurling - probably because most of them are coated or plated.During my first workout with it, I am already able to maintain a hook grip through entire working sets (which I was not able to do with my general purpose bar - I had been doing alternate grip at heavy weights).If you like deadlifts - get it.