Exercises On The Horizontal Bar For Building Strength

Exercises on the horizontal bar can help you to develop most of the muscle groups, such as the lats, biceps, deltoid, the press, the hands - grip strength, arms, trapezoidal, back muscles. Also, they are effective in building pecs muscles too. The easiness of horizontal bar exercises is given by its accessibility. Thus if you have no time or money to go to a gym, you can simple improvise it at home and start building muscles with success.

Exercises to the bar belong to bodyweight exercises group and have a low risk of injury if you follow basic safety precautions. If you never trained at the bar then you maybe ask yourself how to learn to do to these exercises. There is nothing complicated, just grip the bar and try to pull up. Be persistent, do daily strength training, and after a few weeks, you will be able to do full pull-ups.

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Since the bar can rub your bar, is advisable to buy gloves for these exercises. They can be made from leather or other material, the most important is to wear them every time you do exercises to the bar. Once you begin to do pull-ups, then be aware you will not get fast results.

So, be patient and just do them with dedication every time. Along with this, all the time follow the right technique of execution. Grip the bar, and then slowly and evenly pull up your body. The tempo of these exercises should be slow, with no thrusts.

Before turning to complex exercises on the bar, you should thoroughly master the technique of pulling with both hands. This is the basic exercise everybody should perform correctly and fully, and only then is time to go for more exercises on the bar.

In order to perform pull-ups correctly, you have to determine what is your goal - to increase strength or to build muscle mass. Pull-ups are composed of two phases - positive and negative. Positive phase is when you pull up and negative when you lower your body. For increasing muscle strength and endurance you have to slowly pull up your body and lower it fastly. So, you put more accent on the positive phase.

Negative phase is when fastly pull up your body and lower it slowly. In this case, muscles get increased volume. If you want to build both strength and muscle mass meantime than you have to keep your muscles in tension during all movement.

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Along with negative/positive movements a big importance has the type of grip too. Each of these grips put more load on a specific group of muscles. Pull-ups are more used for building shoulders and lats muscles, while chin-ups develop bicep muscles.

When pulling with both hands as the basis of any activities on the bar is mastered, you can move on to more complex exercises, like in every training system. An excellent strength exercise on the horizontal bar is a bit more complicated form of it. For its performance, with one hand grip the horizontal bar, and with the other one the vertical bar.

The lower you make the vertical grip, the harder would be to pull up your body. Gradually increase the number of repetitions until you get to ten or fifteen. This exercise is very effective for strengthening back muscles.

Another variation of standard pull-ups is wide grip pull-ups. This is a difficult exercise and requires long practice. It has great effects on breast muscles,  which exceed all your expectations. To do it, you have to grasp the bar in a wide grip.

When pulling up trying to touch the crossbar with your chest, with relaxed biceps and most butted blades. This exercise is basically on the bar for the back muscles and shoulder girdle. Also, it works trapezoidal and lats group of muscles.

A more complicated version of pull-ups is pull-ups behind your neck. This exercise has a high risk of injury, but if you manage to perform it properly you can successfully train lats, trapezoidal, round and infraspinatus group of muscles. When doing it, make sure your body is strictly perpendicular to the ground.

If you want to increase your biceps than you can do close grip chin-up. You can choose to be assisted when doing this exercise if you feel not enough ready to do it. When doing it, you have to feel biceps contracting and do not pull with the back. Also, you have to keep your hands extend at the bottom, and do not balance your body at all.

For building triceps muscles perfectly works pull-ups with a neutral grip.  Grasp the bar, as one fist was over the other. Pull up your body, turning your head to left or right at the bar level.  Try to change the hand's position between sets.

Read More: Pull-Ups Exercises

Exercises on the horizontal bar are very effective for building press muscles too. Abdomen muscles are worked by raising the legs. This is quite a difficult exercise for beginners, since there is no support for the back and do properly from the technical point of view is quite difficult. That’s why it's much easier to use a wall bar which provides you with support for your back.

During this exercise is mandatory do not allow your legs and torso to swing, since it takes away the right load on the press and the exercise becomes useless. The legs should be quickly and very slowly lowered. Namely, the slow rise of legs involves the work of lower press muscles.

To strengthen upper abdomen muscles you can hook your legs on the bar and twist your body. The big disadvantages of this exercise are hard to do, uncomfortable and risky. As you see a horizontal bar is a great tool for building and strengthening muscles mass.

It is very easy to use for standard pull-ups and can be a great alternative for your workout diversification.  Once you gain experience you can try another more complicated form of pull-ups for great results. But the most important is to include a horizontal bar in your workout routine, following to proper way of execution.

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