Exercises on the horizontal bar: work with your own weight and weights

The hor­i­zon­tal bar is prob­a­bly the most pop­u­lar sports equip­ment, on which every­one likes to prac­tice, from sim­ple ath­letes to pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes. Despite the sim­plic­i­ty of its design, the hor­i­zon­tal bar allows you to work on many mus­cle groups. With its help, arms, chest, back, abs and hips are per­fect­ly worked out. Reg­u­lar exer­cis­es on the hor­i­zon­tal bar can sig­nif­i­cant­ly change your body, mak­ing it embossed, with­out any hint of excess weight. But, in order to get such a result, it is nec­es­sary to choose the right exer­cis­es and make up a com­pre­hen­sive pro­gram of improv­ing your phys­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties from them.

The attrac­tive­ness of the hor­i­zon­tal bar lies in the fact that it can be found not only in the gym, but also on an ordi­nary yard area. Also, the cross­bar can be installed at home. Thus, you can per­form exer­cis­es on the hor­i­zon­tal bar at home. All you need is the desire and some free time.

Physical exercise for mass

Many peo­ple mis­tak­en­ly believe that only monot­o­nous exer­cis­es for one mus­cle group can be per­formed on the hor­i­zon­tal bar: biceps and tri­ceps. But it is enough just to change the grip, and the load will be shift­ed to oth­er parts of the body. There­fore, it will be use­ful for a novice ath­lete to know what types of grip can be used on the hor­i­zon­tal bar, and what is their use:

This is the main method of work­ing with your own weight. The body posi­tion is straight, includ­ing the arms and legs. With such a grip, the palms are direct­ed away from you;

• reverse grip.

The posi­tion of the body is sim­i­lar to a direct grip. The only dif­fer­ence is that the palms are direct­ed towards the ath­lete;

• mixed grip.

Here one palm looks at the ath­lete, the oth­er is direct­ed away from him.

Depend­ing on the dis­tance between the palms, the grip can be nar­row, wide and medi­um. The lat­ter is char­ac­ter­ized by the loca­tion of the palms shoul­der-width apart. A wide grip implies the place­ment of hands at a dis­tance of 50–80 cm from each oth­er. Nar­row grip — when the palms are close togeth­er.

Depend­ing on the dis­tance between the hands, the load is dis­trib­uted to dif­fer­ent mus­cle groups. Phys­i­cal exer­cis­es with a wide grip of the hor­i­zon­tal bar allow you to load the back mus­cles. While the oth­er two types of grip include biceps, tri­ceps and pecs. If you are no longer a begin­ner in strength sports, then you can increase the load and make train­ing more dif­fi­cult by chang­ing the diam­e­ter of the hor­i­zon­tal bar to a larg­er side.

Before you start exer­cis­ing on the hor­i­zon­tal bar, do not for­get to do a warm-up. It should include a short five-minute run and a set of stretch­ing exer­cis­es. Warm-up exer­cis­es are per­formed at a slow pace, with­out sud­den move­ments. This is nec­es­sary to warm the mus­cles and lig­a­ments, to make them more elas­tic. Includ­ing new ele­ments in the warm-up, fol­low the tech­nique of their imple­men­ta­tion. This approach to train­ing min­i­mizes the pos­si­bil­i­ty of injury dur­ing train­ing.

Begin­ners are advised to prac­tice every oth­er day. Dilute your work­outs with run­ning, cycling, out­door sports. To avoid over­load, do a cou­ple of class­es a week as unload­ing. This sched­ule will pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to main­tain the nec­es­sary ath­let­ic shape and con­stant­ly work on your body. If you decide to do the exer­cis­es at home, it will be bet­ter if you find your­self a more expe­ri­enced part­ner who will help you avoid many of the mis­takes made by begin­ners.

A set of exercises for mass gain

When work­ing on the hor­i­zon­tal bar in the direc­tion of gain­ing mus­cle mass, it is rec­om­mend­ed to include a bar­bell, dumb­bells and oth­er weight­ing agents in your work­outs. For those who decide to make a set of exer­cis­es at home, this may seem dif­fi­cult. To diver­si­fy the train­ing and change the angle of phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, it is enough to do push-ups, use the weight of a part­ner, or addi­tion­al­ly exer­cise on sim­u­la­tors in the gym. Just do it with­out fanati­cism.

The most opti­mal train­ing sched­ule: a day of class­es — a day of rest or two days of class­es — one day of rest. After that, the train­ing cycle is repeat­ed. Below we give an approx­i­mate train­ing plan for a two-day cycle.

To gain mus­cle mass, you can com­bine phys­i­cal exer­cis­es on the hor­i­zon­tal bar with exer­cis­es on the uneven bars. Such a com­plex usu­al­ly includes:

• push-ups on the uneven bars;
• work on the hor­i­zon­tal bar on the press (rais­ing the legs to the lev­el of the belt or to the cross­bar, depend­ing on the lev­el of phys­i­cal fit­ness);
• push-ups on the floor or from a bench;
• push-ups on a high bench with arms wide apart.

All of the above ele­ments make up one train­ing day. In your next ses­sion, include:

• pull-ups with a wide grip with the insti­tu­tion of the head over the cross­bar;
• work on the press on uneven bars with leg rais­es;
• pull-ups with dif­fer­ent types of grip.

This set of exer­cis­es allows you to work out the mus­cles of the shoul­ders, arms, hips, chest and back.

Features of performing fitness exercises at home

Of course, when the exer­cis­es on the hor­i­zon­tal bar are orga­nized in the gym, it is eas­i­er to con­trol the train­ing process. But the qual­i­ty of doing exer­cis­es at home can be very high, if approached cor­rect­ly.

1. Pay more atten­tion to the tech­nique of per­form­ing fit­ness exer­cis­es. Remem­ber that when pulling up, you need to include more back mus­cles in the work, and not focus on the arms.
2. Improve your hang­ing tech­nique on the bar. Use addi­tion­al weights, wrist straps, mag­ne­sia. If pos­si­ble, train on hor­i­zon­tal bars with dif­fer­ent cross­bar diam­e­ters. To strength­en the strength of the brush­es, you can sim­ply wrap a tow­el around the hor­i­zon­tal bar.
3. Do not use iner­tial force to per­form pow­er ele­ments. This gives the illu­sion that the exer­cise is being per­formed, but strength is not being devel­oped. You must per­son­al­ly con­trol each ele­ment. It is bet­ter to do few­er rep­e­ti­tions, but bet­ter.
4. Try to main­tain a uni­form pace of pull-ups. Fast does­n’t mean bet­ter.
5. Begin­ners are advised not to force class­es. If you feel that the hor­i­zon­tal bar is dif­fi­cult for you, dilute the work­out with oth­er aux­il­iary exer­cis­es or do pull-ups not to the very cross­bar.

Learn to con­trol the process of train­ing and enjoy exer­cise. Then your goal will def­i­nite­ly be real­ized.