For several years now, I’ve seen advertisements and posts about Base Bars. They sell home calisthenics equipment, and I’ve had my eyes on the set of parallel bars. They don’t take up a whole lot of space, they have two height settings, and I would be able to practice dips.
I’ve gotten a lot better at pull ups by doing them, but I never had a place to practice dips regularly. At CrossFit, the pull up bars are always available so it was easy to toss in practice before and after class. But the dip bars are an attachment there, and I typically don’t have the time or room to take them out and mount them for some quick practice. Also, those bars are set up in a V shape, and it’s hard for me to find a spot on them that’s narrow enough for my reach.
The BaseBars B-Bars are adjustable in width, so I can set them up to be comfortably narrow. The higher of the two height settings is a little too high for me to jump up to a dip, but I believe that will change as I practice. The low setting is perfect for dip practice for me. And I’ve also got a set of gymnastic rings that I can use to do dip practice with the higher setting. I’m so excited about using these to work my upper body in a variety of ways. Even though I’m no longer going to be going to CrossFit regularly, I still intend to get a bar muscle up.
I can practice bar muscle ups to an extent with the B-Bars, but I won’t be able to do a full muscle up on them without someone to spot and put weight on the opposite bar. I can get some pulling work in at the higher height, but not a regular pull up. I’m going to be working on L-sit pull ups, which should be great for building my hip flexors. My husband has quite a few years on me, but his hips are more flexible than mine, so I’ve got to work on those.
I’m planning to look up some calisthenics movements to formally test for myself so that I can do repeat testing periodically and gauge my progress. At this point, with the dip, I can hold high support and low support, and lower from high to low, but I can’t get back up. I’ll either need to lower them for dip work or use a step stool. I’m leaning towards step stool, because I like the higher height that almost lets me do a pull up.
For a long time, I’ve wanted to try the “greasing the groove” method of working on these kinds of movements. I still want to put up a pull up bar outside, but having these bars is going to let me just do a little bit of work throughout the day instead of trying to concentrate all my training in one or two gym sessions per day. Oh, and I’ll also be getting country strong working on my new land. Between those two practices, I think I will get that muscle up, in time.