At Hybrid Athlete, we talk a great deal about lower body mobility, strength, and overall biomechanics. However, this time, it’s time to tackle a movement that helps you develop your core, hips, shoulders, and grip – the toes to bar exercise.
Often overlooked by your regular gym rats, this exercise comes with (obvious) strength gains, yes, but it also plays a crucial part in injury prevention.
So, let’s see how to do it, how to progress, and how to reap the toe-to-bar benefits.
Table of Contents
What Is Toes To Bar (TTB)?
As its name suggests, the toes-to-bar exercise is a hanging exercise where the goal is to, well, touch the bar with your toes. Primarily, it’s looked at as a core exercise, so try to imagine it as an upright sit-up, with your hands reaching your feet.
But, since it is a hanging exercise, we can already see that it doesn’t just target the core.
Toes To Bar Benefits
- Core strength and stability – the TTB movement uses your core muscles to contract your whole body, making it a super-efficient core exercise.
- Grip strength – as is with any hanging exercise, you will develop a strong grip and reap those forearm gains.
- Shoulder strength – shoulders play a big part in both stabilization and movement control during toes to bar. It’s also great for scapula health.
- Hip flexor health – while hip flexors are not doing the main work, they need to remain active to execute a proper TTB.
- Overall back development – while not as efficient as pull-ups, TTB will help you develop an overall stronger back, from the erectors up to your traps.
How To Do Toes To Bar
- Grab the pull-up bar with your grip just over your shoulder width. It’s best to use an overhand grip
- Let your legs hang in the air, with your arms extended and elbows slightly bent to avoid over-extension and tears
- Activate your shoulders (similar to the beginning of a pull-up) and squeeze your glutes and quads. This should put you in a position slightly behind the bar
- Straighten your legs and bring them to the bar by engaging your core
- Slowly bring your legs back to the starting position and repeat
Is toes to bar good for your back?
It absolutely is!
The toes to bar exercise requires you to activate every back muscle to stabilize your body and keep it from swaying. Your back is also holding your body weight the whole time throughout the exercise.
So, we can safely say that the TTB will help you develop healthier and stronger deltoids (shoulders), as well as latisimus dorsi, teres majoris, and erector spinae muscles.
TTB are also a great exercise to activate your hip flexors. However, if you’re looking for a hanging exercise that tackles the hop flexors directly, check out the Hybrid Athlete Ankle Straps For Dumbbells.
How to do toes to bar as a beginner?
If you’re having trouble with toes to bar, there are a few steps you can take to help you get there:
- Active hangs – grab the bar, brace your core, lock in your shoulders, and hold. Do this in sets of 15 to 30 seconds. Grip strength can be a limiting factor, so don’t overdo it.
- Scap Pull-ups – from the active hang position, rotate and lock in your shoulders, hold for a few seconds, and release. This is a great beginner-level exercise for toes to bar and pull-ups.
- Hanging leg raises – as the name suggests, you only do the toes to bar to about halfway up. The key is not to sway while keeping your core and shoulders engaged.
- Hanging knee tucks – bend your knees and bring them to your chest from the active hang position.
- Toes to bar negatives – from the knee tuck position, try to straighten your legs and slooowly bring them down.
Another way to build up to a full toes to bar is to tackle your core directly. We would be crazy not to recommend the Hybrid Athlete Ab Straps that let you safely tuck in your elbows and target the core from a hanging position.
In Conclusion
Toes to bar exercise is no easy feat. It requires formidable grip strength and exceptional control over your body while hanging. But, it does bring a lot of benefits to the table. Not to mention that it is a great way to tackle the whole of your core without destroying your lumbar with countless sit-ups.
Despite its reputation as a core exercise, at the end of the day, toes to bar is a compound exercise that develops more than a few muscles.
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