Pull-ups work every major muscle in your back, including your latissimus dorsi, teres major and trapezius. This multi-joint, functional exercise simulates the type of real-life movement you perform any time you haul something down or across toward you. But pull-ups come with a price: In order to do them, you must have access to some kind of pull-up bar.
Hardware-mount Doorway Bar
Hardware-mount doorway pull-up bars are meant to become a permanent installation in your home. You screw-mount brackets into a doorway, then slide the pull-up bar down into the brackets. Although you can reverse the mounting process, you'll still have screw holes in your door frame.
Hardware-mount Wall or Ceiling Bar
You can also purchase home pull-up bars that mount flush to a flat wall, hang straight down from the ceiling or wedge in a corner. No matter where you mount the bar, you must be sure to secure it through concrete, wall studs or ceiling joists. Fail to do so and the bar is almost guaranteed to fail at some point, posing a risk of fall and injury.
Leverage-mount Bar
Leverage-mount bars, also intended for home use, can be mounted and unmounted from doorways in mere seconds. One side of the leverage-mount assembly sits on top of the door trim, and your weight on the handles --- which protrude through to the opposite side of the doorway --- keeps this support bar wedged firmly in place. Be warned: If your doorway trim is not securely fastened, or if you fail to securely position the support bar atop the doorjamb, this type of bar can fail.
Tower or Cable Machine Bars
Gyms commonly offer pull-up bars on cable pulley machines. You might also find pull-up bars on a stand-alone "tower," paired with dip bars and possibly a hip flexor machine, sometimes known as a captain's chair. If you're not strong enough to do regular pull-ups, you can use the handles on the captain's chair as improvised pull-up handles for self-assisted pull-ups.
Assisted Pull-ups
Some gyms also offer assisted pull-up machines. This stand-alone machine has a standard pull-up bar, a knee- or foot-support lever positioned beneath the bar, and a weight stack. You select how much weight you want the machine to counter-balance, effectively reducing your body weight by that much, then stand or kneel on the support lever and perform pull-ups.
Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous types of pull-up bars crop up in unexpected places. Examples include wooden bar frames, found in some school gyms; stand-alone pull-up bars of various heights in outdoor fitness centers, or an improvised pull-up bar made by setting a Smith machine to a mid-chest setting. Like the captain's chair, you can use this improvised bar to perform self-assisted pull-ups.
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