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Did you know that you can do more than a standard chin up with your chin up bar? This will mean you can get more use out of your chin up bar, exercising more muscle groups and giving you a much better overall toned an muscular physique.

Chin Ups

Chin ups should be performed by griping the Chin Up Bar with palms facing towards you (supinated grip). You should pull yourself up until your chin is raised above the bar, prefrebly until you can touch the bar with your upper chest. If you cant do this at first you can do negative chin ups where you use a chair to put yourself in the raised position and lower yourself down. You can do assisted chin ups; where a band, chair or friend helps you with the last little push to the top up kip chin ups; where a swing of the leg can be used to aid you in the exercise. Once you can do chin ups you can start adding weight to make the exercise harder.

Targets: Latissimus dorsi

Assisting Muscles: Brachialis, brachioradialis, biceps brachii , teres major, posterior deltoid, infraspinatus, teres minor, rhomboids, levator scapulae, middle and lower trapezius and pectoralis muscles.

Pull Ups

Pull ups should be completed in exactly the same way as chin ups but with the palms facing away from you (pronated grip). By changing your grip, and the range of movements this restricts you to less emphasis is placed on using the bicep muscle which will force the other muscle groups to be worked more.

Targets: Latissimus dorsi

Assisting Muscles: Brachialis, brachioradialis, biceps brachii, teres major, deltoid muscle, infraspinatus, teres minor, rhomboids, levator scapulae, trapezius lower, trapezius middle, and pectoralis minor.

Hanging Leg Raises

Leg raises are completed by hanging from the chin up bar and raising the legs up in a straight line to make an L shape or right angle.

Targets: Abdominals

Incline Press Ups

We all know that a press up is a poor man’s bench press, but when you are away or don’t have time to go to the gym a press up is better than nothing.

With some of the newer generation over the door chin up bars such as the Powerbar or Medicarn these can be lay on the floor and the frame used for performing incline press ups, instead of just doing standard press ups. By performing the exercise on an incline more focus is placed on the upper chest muscles which will give a fuller and better look throughout the body instead of just focusing on the lower chest muscles.

Targets: Pectoralis major muscle

Assisting Muscles: Anterior deltoids, serratus anterior, coracobrachialis, and the triceps.

Decline Press Ups

In exactly the same way as you have just used the bar to perform incline press ups you can also put your feet on it to perform decline press ups; which will target the lower pectoral area instead of the upper.

If you’re interested in further information on training at home with a chin up bar or product information visit Chin Up Bar for further information.