Benefits of Using a Door Pull Up Bar

A doorframe pull up bar is an affordable and simple way to train your upper body at home.

Thanks to the high cost-effectiveness, it’s among the first purchases for people starting a home or garage gym.

Whether you want to build the strength in your upper body, tone your muscles, or improve your fitness in general, a door pull-up bar offers a bunch of benefits. From versatile exercise options like pull-ups, chin-ups, and leg raises to the convenience of working out at home, this piece of equipment is a must-have for a lot of people.

What Are the Benefits of Using Door Pull up Bars?

✅ Convenient Home Workout

Doorway chinup bars are great for at-home workouts. For the level of versatility, they require little space and are typically inexpensive. They’re also easy to store and, with proper use, don’t require too much maintenance.

Plus, if you choose a portable door jam pull up bar, you can take it with you and work out anywhere you can attach it to a door.

✅ Excellent Upper Body Strengthening

Pull-up variations are some of the most popular exercises for at-home and street workouts because of their convenience. Once you learn a few pull-up variations, you can successfully work out multiple upper-body muscle groups at once.

This also makes them quite time efficient since you won’t have to do subsequent reps for different body parts. Simply by adjusting your grip type, arm spread, speed, and finishing position, you can quickly switch from exercising your biceps, shoulders, and chest to triceps, upper, and lower back, for example.

✅ Improved Core Stability

When doing pull-ups and related exercises, apart from developing your upper body, you strengthen your core as well. But there are also core-specific trainings you can use your door frame chin up bar for. For example, hanging exercises such as knee raises, bicycle kicks, L-sits, one or two-arm dead hangs, or even simple swinging can be done at home with just a doorframe pull up bar.

✅ Improved Grip Strength

A study published in The Lancet Journal concluded that there is a direct correlation between grip strength and decreased chances of heart attacks, strokes, and cardiovascular mortality.

When you first start using a door hanging pull up bar, you’ll notice your maximum pull-up reps and the time you can spend hanging are determined mostly by grip strength.Over time, your grip will improve and, according to the study, your quality of life will improve as well.

✅ Upper-Body Posture Improvement & Stretching

Apart from strength development, exercises involving pull-up bars naturally stretch your muscles and spine. As a result, not only will this improve your standing posture, but you’ll appear taller as well.

What to Look For in Door Pull up Bars?

1. Design

The products on the list are designed to fit the most common door frame sizes in the U.S. and Canada. Pull-up bars are simple tools that don’t vary too much in design. The main focus of this rating was how much functionality the design was able to fit in, or if there are unique features that set it apart from other bars.

2. Adjustability

A pull up bar for door frame hanging doesn’t feature too many moving parts, if any. Adjustability was mostly graded based on how easy it was to mount and dismount before and after use.

3. Reliability

Reliability is arguably the most important thing to look for in doorway chinup bars. The mounted pull-up bars will naturally be more stable than the detachable ones.

However, all doorway options on the list are tested and reliable for the average person to use. Pay attention to the sizing and get one according to your door frame, and make sure you fit the manufacturer-specified maximum capacity. If you properly check those two things, as long as you mount it correctly and don’t use it in unintended ways, you won’t have reliability issues with your bar of choice.

4. Multifunctionality

For the most part, a pull-up bar is a simple tool with a single purpose. However, manufacturers that compete in the home and garage gym markets tend to add extra features to expand the potential use of their products.

Mounted pull-up bars tend to sacrifice multifunctionality for better stability. On the other hand, detachable pull-up bars come in various shapes and sizes, particularly in the number and variety of grips.

The more workouts that can be performed with a single bar, the higher its multifunctionality rating will be. Some of the detachable bars stand out in this category even more, since they can be used for a variety of other hand-held or floor exercises, as we’ve seen.

Tips From the Champ

It’s important to note that before you start any pull-up exercises, ensure that you are in a safe environment and that the pull-up bar you are using is secure and can support your weight. Remove anything from underneath the door frame, such as carpets that you might slip on once you dismount.

Once the bar is mounted in the door, pull on it in a few directions to check the sturdiness. Then try a neutral hanging position for a few seconds and, if everything’s okay, begin your exercise.

Oleksiy Torokhtiy

Olympic Weightlifting Champion

5. Price/Quality

Price VS quality is a common concern for many people when building their home or garage gym. Rest assured that all products on the list are of good quality. If you make sure that the specifications fit your needs, the bar will serve you well.

Usually, the products higher on the list offer the best value for money in my opinion, but yours may differ depending on your budget. On average, the more expensive product will be of higher quality build than the budget counterpart.

However, that doesn’t mean the less expensive choices are bad or that they can’t compete with the higher-cost ones. That’s why I list choices for various budgets, so everyone can make the best decision with their money.

Recomended Pull-Up Bar

Iron Gym Pull-Up Bar

• Mounting Type: Door mounted, removable
• Handles: Three handle types – narrow, wide, and neutral
• Dimensions (Height, Length, Depth): 13 x 36 x 11 inches
• Doorway Size: Recommended for 24 – 32 inches
• Maximum Weight: 300 pounds
• Material: Steel
• Color: Black and gray
• Features: Door mount system, neutral grip handles, foamed grips, floor workout tool

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It comes with three basic grips found on most pull-up bars – narrow, wide, and neutral. These should provide enough workout variation for basic bar exercises such as differently gripped pull-ups and chin-ups.

However, that’s not all exercises you can do with it. Since the bar is detachable, it can be placed on the floor and used as a push-up handle, dip seat, and plank rest, for example.

The door jammers are covered with foamed padding, and the door rest has a soft cushion to prevent direct contact with the surface and protect the door frame and wall from scratches and chips.

Out of the box, the bar does require minor assembly, however, a safety manual and necessary tools are provided in the package.

How to Use Door Pull up Bars Right?

1. Make Sure It’s Secured

It’s important to note that before you start any pull-up exercises, ensure that you are in a safe environment and that the pull-up bar you are using is secure and can support your weight. Remove anything from underneath the door frame, such as carpets that you might slip on once you dismount.

Once the bar is mounted in the door, pull on it in a few directions to check the sturdiness. Then try a neutral hanging position for a few seconds and, if everything’s okay, begin your exercise.

2. Maintain Correct Posture

Pull-ups make no sense if the execution is messy, rushed, and lacks correct body posture. Posture is arguably the #1 most important thing to properly doing an exercise – far more important than the number of reps or speed.

When you do an exercise incorrectly, at best you are missing out on important muscle groups, and at worst you risk harming yourself. A detailed study done about pull-ups confirmed bad shoulder positioning at the start of the exercise was associated with high injury risk.

Fitness experts, personal trainers, and physiotherapists know that nearly all the small, but common exercise injuries happen as a result of bad posture.

3. Try Different Pull-Up Techniques

Pull-up exercises are a tried and tested method to develop your shoulders, arms, back, chest, core, grip, push, pull, and more. There are many variations of this exercise you can try with a multipurpose pull up bar for doorway mounting.

The two basic exercise types are the pull-up and chin-up, with the main difference being the direction your palm is facing when gripping. Chin-ups have your palms facing towards you, while in pull-ups they face outwards.

Pull-ups tend to be better for triceps and back development, while chin-ups are excellent for your biceps and shoulders, for example. Experimenting with grip width is also an excellent way to expand your pull-up variations.

4. Hang From It

As we’ve already discussed throughout the article, pull-up bars are excellent for hanging exercises as well. Hanging exercises stimulate blood flow, improve core stability, and stretch your upper body. They also improve your grip strength, balance, and hand-to-eye coordination.

Here are some other hanging variations to try:

• Dead hangs
• L-sits
• Hanging knee raises
• Hanging bicycle kicks
• Hanging flutter kicks
• Swinging, and more

To increase exercise difficulty, you can try the same exercise by hanging from one arm instead of two.

5. Protect Your Palms

Anyone who uses pull-up bars regularly can tell you how easy it is to damage the skin on your palms. Some pull-up bars already come with protective padding, so you won’t need to worry. However, for bars without padding, consider using protective gloves or using hand chalk.

FAQ

Are Door Pull up Bars Any Good?

Doorway pull-up bars are an excellent choice for at-home upper-body workouts. Considering their usage variety and average price point, they’re some of the most cost-effective and great for one of your first home or garage gym purchases.

Can You Close a Door With a Pullup Bar?

Unfortunately, to mount a pull up bar that hangs on door frames, the door will have to stay open. However, if you require a solution to keep your door closed for noise or convenience reasons, for example, there are alternatives on this list too.

For example, the Rogue Jammer Pull-Up Bar or REP Pull-Up Bar are meant to be mounted above door frames, so they can be used when the door is closed too.

Do Pullup Bars Damage Door Frames?

Pull up bars can damage your door frame if improperly installed or misused. However, every pull up bar for door frame use has some form of cushioning to stop it from damaging your door and wall. Whether you’ll notice damage will depend more on the doorframe quality and wall paint, for example.

Conclusion

Pull-up bars are excellent home solutions for strengthening your upper body. They provide a wide exercise variety and show impressive results for such a convenient and often inexpensive product. You could be a complete beginner or a pro and a pull-up bar will still be useful. If you’re on the market for a new one, we highly recommend checking out the Iron Gym Pull-Up Bar.

Do you perform pull up exercises in your workout routines? Do you use or have you considered getting a door hanging pull up bar?

References:

1. Prognostic value of grip strength: findings from the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study // The Lancet Journal: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62000-6/fulltext
2. Can poor posture affect your height? // Spinal Carechiropractic: https://www.spinalcarechiropractic.com.au/blog/2020/9/11/can-poor-posture-affect-your-heightnbsp
3. Scapula kinematics of pull-up techniques: Avoiding impingement risk with training changes // ScienceDirect: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1440244015001747
4. The Pull-up // National Strength & Conditioning Association: https://journals.lww.com/nsca-scj/fulltext/2014/06000/the_pull_up.14.aspx
5. Photos are made by Torokhtiy Media Team.