5 Best Back Exercises Using Pull-Up Bar

The pull-up bar is a challenge for even the strongest of athletes. When you're hanging from the bar, your forearms and core must work together to keep you up in the air. When you start to tire, that causes serious burns to your forearms, biceps, lats, and pecs.

Using a bar for weight training exercises, you can work out your entire upper body. That's because unlike many other weight training poses, which lock your range of motion, the bar allows you to move freely during the exercise. That results in improved overall flexibility while also building strength.

Back Exercises Using Pull-Up Bar

Here's a look at five such exercises:

1) Kipping

Kipping pull-ups use momentum to help propel the body. It's an excellent (though brutal) anaerobic exercise for the upper body if you nail down the technique. If done correctly, it's a great way to build strong lats, wide shoulders, and a powerful grip.

Here's how to do a kipping pull-up:

For an incredibly effective and fun full body exercise, try using an overhand grip with your hands shoulder-width apart as you pull your legs back so that your body forms a backward arc.
Swing your legs forward as you push with your arms to bring yourself up to the bar.
Perform the desired number of repetitions.

2) Close Grip Pull-up

A close grip pull-up hits the muscles in your arms more than a regular one. That’s because they have to work harder to pull your body up higher, vertically. Don’t worry: you’ll still activate your rhomboids, lower and middle traps, and serratus posterior superior.

To do this exercise:

Use an overhand grip to hold the bar—which will be situated on a squat rack at chest level—with your hands positioned slightly more than shoulder-width apart.
Pull up to the bar in a smooth motion so that the bar touches the bottom of the neck at the top of your pull-up.
Lower as far down as you can, keeping the movement controlled. Lock your arms when you reach the bottom, and perform the desired number of reps.

3) Wide Grip Pull-up

When you do wide-grip pull-ups, your back muscles work harder than when you do close-grip pull-ups.

The angle of your arms in relation to your body is shorter when doing a wide-grip pull-up, so your back muscles have to work harder to lift the body. That's why wide-grip pull-ups are great for building the outer part of your back.

Here's how to do this exercise:

When you do pull-ups, hold the bar with an overhand grip slightly wider than shoulder width.
Pull yourself up smoothly till the bar grazes your throat at the top of the pull-up.
Lower yourself down slowly—keeping your movements controlled—till your arms are straight, and perform the desired number of reps.

4) Eccentric

A negative, or eccentric, pull-up slows down the downward phase of the exercise. During this phase, your muscles are under a greater amount of tension than they are during the positive or concentric phase.

That leads to more muscle fiber breakdown and soreness. You can choose how long you want to perform this movement—maybe five or ten seconds.

To do this pose:

Use a pull-up grip where you can reach the bar with your upper chest, not your throat, and slowly lower yourself down as far as possible.
Pause for one second at the bottom of each rep, and try to complete as many reps as possible before failure.
Perform the desired number of reps, and see how long you can hold the bar during the eccentric portion.

5) Tandem Grip

The tandem grip is the most common type of pull-up grip. It involves your hands being placed on the bar so that the palms are facing each other. If you’re using an open bar (one with two ends), you can alternate the side you pull up on. If not, try placing the hand closest to you first and placing your other hand behind it.

Here's how to do this workout:

Stand with your left side facing a weight bench or a barbell on the floor, holding it with an overhand grip.
Keeping your upper body as still as possible, push your head up towards the right side of the bench to start raising the weight, and bring it back down to lower it.
Lift your head up again toward the left side of the bench, and lower it back down.

Takeaway

Simply put, there isn't a single exercise that can work out the entire back. Even if you could isolate each muscle in the back with an exercise, it would be impossible to work them all sufficiently because of the way our body works.

So, the best way to work your back is through a combination of exercises, working different muscle groups simultaneously. That can give you a balanced and healthy back.