Best Parallel Bars for Home and Beyond

Parallel Bars Workout Exercises:

L-sit:

Difficulty: Medium

The l-sit is one of the most demanding and complete core exercises you can do using the dip bars.

It consists of grabbing the bars with your hands aligned and elevating your legs until they form a 90-degree angle with your upper body.

One possible progression is, to begin with your legs tucked into your chest, then move to a 1 leg extended l-sit, then a normal l-sit, and when you’ve mastered that, move to the v-sit, which consists of elevating the legs even further.

Once again, our favourite video on the l-sit progression is by Antranik:

Push-ups and Dips:

Difficulty: Easy to Medium

Dips are the quintessential exercises for working on your lats.

If you’re trying to get a V-shaped back, this is the exercise to obsess with.

The progression is quite simple: If you can’t do normal dips in the parallel bars, you can do a series of floor exercises, as shown in the video below. Though personally, we recommend working on a dip progression based on resistance bands.

When you can do dips without resistance bands, just add a weight belt.

ThenX has a great video on these two exercises:

Handstands:

Difficulty: Hard

Warning: Doing handstands in the parallel bars is for advanced athletes only. Controlling the fall can be hard and can result in serious injury.

If doing handstands in the floor is no longer challenging, bar handstands are a great progression. They will put a much higher emphasis on wrist control and strength

Seth Travers has a good tutorial on this progression:

Planches:

Difficulty: Medium to Hard

The planche is another great core and upper body exercise. The recommended progression is: Tucked planche, where your knees go up to your chest, one legged planche, and finally the normal plance.

Once this is easy peasy, you can combine the planche with a handstand.

The youtube channel Calisthenicsmovements, which is great by the way, has a very good tutorial on this move:

Final Thoughts

We hope that this article has helped you in your calisthenics journey towards a more flexible, lean, and strong body and mind.

The dip bars will undoubtedly take your home training to another level, opening the doors to a universe of static and dynamic exercises.

If you want more info on a solid calisthenics routine to do a home, read our article on the subject, and as always any feedback or comments are appreciated in the box below!