Some Bar Exercises

Gyms usually have several bars of different weights: 8 pounds, 10 pounds, 12 pounds and 16 pounds. You can use these bars for a variety of exercises with your arms, abdominal muscles and legs. Use a bar weight that will work out your muscles, and will not give you pain. Here are some of these exercises:

1. Biceps: Do biceps curls as per the biceps section.

2. Triceps: Hold the bar over your head Keep your elbows straight above you without locking them. Your arms are facing forward. Bend your elbows so that the bar is lowered beneath your head. Return to start position. Do four sets of ten repetitions.

3. Shoulders: Keep your legs shoulder-with apart. Bend your knees slightly. Hold the bar with your palms facing you and your hands touching. Bring it under your chin as you exhale and inhale when you extend your arms. Do not bend your elbows. Do five sets of ten repetitions.

4. Abdominal muscles: Do abdominal crunches with the bar on your belly. Do four sets of ten repetitions.

5. Transverse obliques: Hold the bar behind your neck. Keep your legs a little more than shoulder width apart and bend the knees slightly. Twist side to side slowly. Twist behind on each side beyond 180 degrees without feeling stress on your side. Do four sets of ten repetitions.

6. Either stand up straight or support yourself against a wall with one arm. Lift up one leg at a time, as a sort of leg extension. Hold the bar wit one or two arms over your quadriceps muscle. Lift your leg from the floor to a little more than 90 degrees above your waist, or start about one an a half feet from the floor and lift to the start. Do four sets of ten repetitions with each leg.

7. Lean a little forward and place the bar over the back of one leg. Hold the bar with one arm. Repeat [5.], but lift your leg backwards. Do four sets of ten repetitions with each leg.

8. Do leg abductor exercises by holding the bar, suing both arms, so that the bar is “inside” the knee of the leg that you will extend outward, and “outside” the ankle of that leg. Do four sets of ten repetitions with each leg.

9. You can try to hold the bar so that you can do adductor exercises, but holding it in a way that will keep it in place and will give you a work out may be difficult to do. If you can do this, do four sets of ten repetitions with each leg.

10. Do squats with both hands holding the bar over your quadriceps. This is like a pliette ballet move. Keep your legs shoulder-width apart. Keep your back straight. Sit down and then come up as in a squat. Do five sets of ten repetitions.Some of the information for this section was taken from http://www.self.com/.Accessed in 2005