Exercise Your Core With Only the Chin Bar
Welcome back! I hope you all enjoy working on your corpus without making any planks this month . Today we’ll talk about the exercises you can do while hanging on a pull-up bar or a set of gymnastic rings.
In these exercises, you mainly work your abs and hip flexors (the muscles in your legs that connect your torso to your hips). Here are a few I’ve tried lately, and you can too.
Hanging knee or leg raises
Hanging from the bar, raise your legs so that your hips are at least parallel to the floor. Keeping your knees bent will make you look like you’re sitting in an imaginary chair. This is a simpler version. If you cannot fully raise your knees, just go as high as possible.
Make it harder by keeping your legs straight. Can you lift your legs so that you look like the letter L? Not? Me neither. An alternative is to raise your bent knees and then straighten your legs while lowering them. Or lift your bent knees, straighten your legs, and then lower them again with your knees bent.
Lap circles or wipers
Again, you can do this with straight legs if you are a brute, or bent knees otherwise. Draw a giant circle in the air with your kneecaps (or toes) lifting them to your left, then as high as possible, then to the right and back.
For the wiper version, skip the bottom of the circle and just go back and forth.
Hollow retention
Okay, now we’re in easier territory. You can practice hollow holds anywhere , including lying on the floor, but hanging is fun too. Your goal is to squeeze your abs to tilt your pelvis and rib cage towards each other. Your torso will take on a small c-shape.
From toes to bar and from knees to elbows
The most impressive ab exercise is one I can’t do:my toes to the bar . Literally, you just twist your hip and raise your straight legs so that your toes touch the bar you are hanging on.
If you can’t, try a bent knee, knees to elbows.
I cannot do either one or the other. If you can, I welcome you.