Hatfield exercises like hatfield squats, hatfield lunges, hatfield bulgarian split squats are completed with a safety bar on the back but with the hands holding onto the either the squat rack or a barbell in front of you. It promotes additional stability, reducing the requirement and skill of balancing the bar over an efficient squatting position and allowing the legs/whole body to be simply loaded up. Some benefits for utilising hatfield variations:

1. Able to load up – fairly obvious one. Extra support with the arms allow you to use a fair amount more load on traditional barbell lifts (for most athletes greater than 30% for most variations I’d say). Experiencing heavy loads can be beneficial for general tissue adaptation (bones – wolfs law, tendons, ligaments all adapt to heavy loads).
2. Easier to target weaker positions, i.e. pull knees forward to load the quads or load weaker leg as the arms can help keep the body in a targeted loading pattern.
3. Experiencing heavy loads may help some athletes build up tolerance and capacity or even confidence for future harder training phases. I.e. utilising hatfield variations pre season may allow for better tolerance to lifting heavy in season.
4. If you’re an athlete that struggles with loading at deeper ROMs hatfield set ups serve as a counterbalance that helps achieve deeper ranges
5. Great for an athlete with an upper limb injury that can’t grip the bar on their backs or front rack to still load the lower limb

Although when programming hatfield variations we do have to be mindful of a few other considerations:

1. High amount of stress created from utilising heavier loads through large ROM generally require greater recovery times. Placing away from important training/sport events especially when introing is recommended
2. Mostly ideal for athletes who have a strong squat history (no need to stop squeezing the juice out of traditional lifts with beginners) or rehab space

Hatfield variations, like many other lower body strength training options, are a useful variation that any athlete who exerts force into the floor in their sport can benefit from. It’s unique loading benefits can be applied in many contexts but coaches should be strategic in when to push them and when not to push them in order to best prepare an athlete for their sport.