If you are tired of conventional workouts, and want to challenge yourself, jump up and grab a hold of a pull bar. Pull up bars help you work your upper body musculature with nothing but the weight of your body for resistance. Exercises on the bar work your primary back muscles, along with your abs and arms. When doing your workouts, use a full range of motion.
Forward Grip Variations
A conventional pull up is performed with an overhand grip and your hands about shoulder-width apart. With your legs straight down or bent and crossed behind you, pull yourself up to the bar and lower yourself down. When pulling up, always try to get your chest to bar height. This exercise mainly works the V-shaped latissimus dorsi, rhomboids major and minor, and your biceps. The rhomboids are sandwiched between your shoulder blades.
If you want to widen your lat muscles, perform the pull up with a wide grip. Follow the same procedure as the conventional pull up, but place your hands about 6 inches wider than shoulder-width apart.
Reverse Grip for Biceps
Reverse grip pull ups are more commonly known as chin-ups. These pull up variations place the most emphasis on the two-part biceps muscle in your upper, front arms. To execute this pull up, grasp the bar with an underhand, shoulder-width grip, pull yourself up as high as possible, slowly lower yourself down and repeat. To place more emphasis on the inner part of your biceps, perform these with a wide grip. To place the emphasis on your outer biceps, narrow your grip.
Ab Exercises
Even though your abs are always contracting when you perform pull up exercises, you also can specifically target this area. For example, the hanging knee to chin raise works your upper and lower abs simultaneously. While hanging from the bar with your arms straight, pull your knees up toward your chin, slowly lower your legs back down and repeat. This exercise becomes more challenging when you keep your legs straight and raise them up. To target your obliques, which are on the sides of your ribcage, alternate pulling your knees or legs up at an angle toward your shoulders.
Burpee Pull Ups
A burpee pull up is a fusion of two intense exercises. By combining the burpee with the pull up, you literally work every muscle in your body at once. To do this exercise, stand with your feet together, bend down and place your hands on the floor in front of your feet. Kick your legs behind your body. Once your toes hit the floor, immediately do a push-up. As soon as your arms are fully extended, hop your feet back to the starting point and launch yourself into the air, grasping the pull up bar with your hands. Perform a pull up, lower yourself down slowly, drop back to the floor and repeat. When jumping up to the bar, use any grip you like--mix them up for variation.
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