The Duffalo Bar

All Kabuki bars and other equipment are manufactured in Portland, Oregon, at Kabuki’s facility. The Duffalo bar weighs 55 pounds. It is 95 inches long. The plate area is 17.25 inches, plenty of room for as many bumper plates as you can handle. Any Olympic plates will fit on the Duffalo bar with no problem.

The steel used for the bar is Kabuki’s chrome alloy proprietary material. The bar has a black oxide and zinc finish with nickel plating, making the bar impervious to rust, moisture, and corrosion. Bushings are oil-filled for smooth rotational movement, further reducing the load on your shoulders and ensuring you get a full range of motion without hyperextending.

The Duffalo bar’s weight capacity is 1500 pounds. For perspective, the world record for an unassisted squat is 1036 pounds, set by Russian powerlifter Andrey Malanichev in August 2015. Unless you plan on bionic leg and back implants, you won’t be overloading this bar any time soon.

For all its advanced features and worth-every-penny price tag, the Duffalo bar essentially has one application. It will make your lifting practice safer and more effective, leading to consistent effort, noticeable results, and the confidence to know you will avoid injury over time. The bend in the bar, though it may look odd, will keep your joints in line, take a load off your shoulder, and recruit more of your back muscles to distribute the load during standing barbell squats.

If you have ever taken a lesson from a trainer, or watched a professional video, you know you are supposed to draw your shoulder blades in tight and strong during a squat. This is true whether you are doing a high bar (top of your shoulders) or low bar (shoulder blades) squat, and regardless of your height and starting point. Even if you squat with an empty bar as a warmup, you must practice pulling in or retracting the shoulder blades. The Duffalo bar uses its own ergonomics to encourage shoulder blade engagement or scapular retraction. It’s just another way this finely engineered product keeps you safe and makes you stronger with regular use.

In addition, the Duffalo bar can save a lot of spinal strain by helping you maintain a neutral spine throughout the squat movement. This is something everyone needs, not just professional athletes or advanced powerlifters. But the ability to brace one’s spine more easily is one of the things that makes the Duffalo bar so popular in commercial gyms and NFL training rooms.

Kabuki is so confident in their product that, if you ask via the website, they will refer you to a gym in your area that will let you test drive the bar. We think you will be impressed with how the rounded, knurled, contoured middle bend rolls onto your back and sits in place. It is superior to a standard bar because our backs are not flat surfaces.

There is zero question in our minds that you will see rapid improvements in both your lifting performance and recovery time after just two or three weeks of using the Duffalo bar. The bar is very expensive and has to be custom made--the website advises you to wait at least 3 weeks for delivery. If the bar did not deliver on its promises, it would not enjoy brisk sales, a stable of great reviews, and a presence in both commercial gyms and professional sports training rooms.

The Duffalo isn’t just for back squats, either. You can use it for front-facing squats, and the bar will reduce pain and pressure on your collarbone. In any kind of squat, the bar augments what trainers call Intra-Abdominal Pressure (IAP). This is the effect you feel when you brace or tighten all the muscles in your trunk for planks or pull-ups. Since the Duffalo augments lat recruitment and shoulder engagement, it gives you a better foundation for bracing and buttressing those core muscles that will reduce spinal pressure even more.

The Duffalo bar also helps with the other classic barbell lift, the bench press. That is because the bend naturally holds your wrist at a slight angle to encourage a natural range of motion. It aligns the joints in your shoulder and, like with squats, the bar will engage some of your back muscles as you lie on the bench. Using the Duffalo cuts down and eases shoulder pain, too.

You will want to stick with the Duffalo bar and use it for most if not all of your Olympic style lifts, with one important caveat: you should already have an established, consistent, structured lifting program in place. We do not recommend spending the money on this piece of specialty equipment, thinking it will encourage you to start lifting. It would be similar to buying a pair of high-end powerlifting shoes before you learn proper form on the bench press.

Provided you have a history of lifting under your belt, are OK with the upfront investment and are confident that you will continue lifting while seeing improvements through the use of the bar, we say go ahead and pull the trigger. The Duffalo bar is only for the committed, and if that’s you, the dividends will be exponential.

Of course, you can always call Kabuki or do some digging around on your own and find a gym that will let you try out one of their Duffalo's. It may mean getting a day pass, but the $20 or so is well worth seeing and feeling the benefits firsthand before you make a purchase decision.

We aren’t going to quote reviews or provide outbound links, but you can easily find dozens of testimonials and reviews from other fitness sites, all attesting to how the Duffalo bar helps athletes fine-tune their performance. The Kabuki Strength website, which we have linked to elsewhere, is a good place to start. It includes stories of lifters who were sidelined or working at half steam due to pain and were able to get relief and revitalize their practice by using the bar.

Any review you find, on various fitness sites, will be a positive one and will probably include a link to its inventor Chris Duffin explaining the product’s features in detail. Duffin is a captivating speaker, with numerous credentials and awards as a powerlifter. His enthusiasm for the Duffalo bar and for the sport as a whole is clearly more than just salesmanship.

We’d put any Kabuki product toe to toe with any Rogue Fitness product, and be hard-pressed to say which one is more durable, effective, and reliable. In fact, if you pair the Duffalo bar with a Rogue power rack, you just might become unstoppable. Both companies manufacture their own strength equipment, right at their facilities in the U.S. And both companies are committed to helping lifters and other athletes maximize their gains while limiting downtime from injury or fatigue.

The Kabuki Strength Duffalo bar is made of chrome-alloy steel, with zinc, black oxide, and nickel finish and plating. It weighs 55 pounds, 10 more than a standard Olympic bar. There are sharp knurled edges to aid the bar is resting on your back and shoulders. The knurling is tough, but will not cut into your skin or leave indentations. Bushings are made of bronze and impregnated with oil. They are sealed and maintenance-free. The bushings will further aid in range of motion and comfort during squats and presses.

Each stainless steel end cap is stamped with the Kabuki strength logo. As we mentioned before, you will need to modify your J-Cups, order custom ones from Kabuki, or use the bar upside down to pair it with a squat rack. The bend in the middle means the Duffalo won’t rest on regular J-Cups the way a straight bar will.

We have used, reviewed, and picked apart hundreds of fitness items, from resistance bands to elliptical machines, and we cannot recommend the Kabuki Strength Duffalo bar enough. If you are a serious lifter, wanting to improve form, reduce pain, and push your lifting weight beyond what you find comfortable, this product is absolutely worth the money. Just make sure you follow all safety procedures, follow a healthy eating plan, cross-train your muscles, and have at least several months of consistent lifting experience under your belt before you make a purchase decision. If you meet these prerequisites, the Duffalo bar will last a lifetime and never let you down no matter how much punishment you can dish out.