What does your straps bar use - one pvc pipe or 2 on the men's high metal bar? ..So you have your straps and hands on one tube or on 2 separate tubes. I have practiced on 2 separate tubes - it's more like how it is on the real bars, more than doing it on one tube. What about you?

The 2 pvc pipes way also gives you more flexibility on how you can use the straps bar, like you can do one hand on the pvc/straps and one off, on the fabric wrist guard that is around the bar, w/o straps on that wrist, etc. Plus, the two pvc pipes does make it closer to how it is on the real bars, and you can shift where each hand is on the bars - but not with the one pvc pipe way.

I feel comfortable on the 2 pvc tube way...haven't tried out the 1 pvc tube way, but I think it would be annoying to be stuck like that on the one tube and not have the option to move your hands and adjust your hands/shoulder width as you do the giants on straps!! or also other moves you do on straps, like free hip. But on the other hand, it would be maybe better to do skills like toes on in between your hands / free hip on the straps with the 1 pvc tube - b/c that gets rid of the problem you would have with the 2 pvc tubes way of getting your skin on your feet caught in the tubes, under it! ouch! That's why we actually do just straddle toe-on on straps - straddle the skills instead of pike with feet in between your hands. You don't want to get pinched under the pvc tubes!

mmm I love skittles! Another thing to consider in the set up is how loose/how tight the pvc pipes are. I had one practice at a gym this week where the pvc pipes were so tight! One felt like it was getting really stuck on the bar. I opted not to do giants on that straps bar! A coach said the tight pvc tubes resembles the real bar better, and that you don't want the pvc pipes loose (and that this tight set up was better) because then your hands/arms will move and you could break your wrist by your body going one way and your hands going the other with loose pvc pipes and it would get you ready to do giants on the real bar more because you have to shift your hands and if you don't you break your wrists with your body going one way and your arms another. But I think that can happen even more with tight pvc pipes than nice loose ones for the straps bar, especially when one pvc pipe is really tight and the other is tight to different degrees, and then one pvc gets stuck and your body then goes one way and one arm goes the other, and the other arm goes the other way, you know. The one pvc pipe set up would take away the problem of one pvc pipe being tighter on the bar than the other or one getting stuck while the other moves, but I still would go with the 2 pvc pipes rather than one and just keep them on the straps bar with a good, comfortable looseness, so that when you roll them with your hands to check them before you go on, they roll nice and smoothly - too loose gives you problems too of course. Doing giants with two pvc pipes is more like the real bar where you can move your arms. Doing the straps bar with tight pvc pipes reminds me of some coaches' techniques of setting up the straps bar with wrist guards instead of pvc pipes, for the same reason of getting the shifting your hands part. Bad idea!! Better to learn to shift your hands another way that doesn't add more danger! Another related topic: "straps for giants": http://www.gymchat.com/messageboards/viewtopic.php?t=1045