The Best Gym Equipment You're Not Using

Somewhere in your gym, usually hidden where the kettlebells and floor mats are kept in the warm up areas you’ll find an interesting bit of gym equipment that can revolutionise your workouts; the parallettes. If you’re unfortunate to not have one at your gym then fear not, you can always buy one for your home and use it for a home workout 1-2 times per week.

Parallettes are two, usually up to knee height, bars that can be used for calisthenics workout to do different types of bodyweight movements. These exercises are widely used by gymnasts, athletes and anyone else looking for different ways to build a lean and strong physique. The movements involved incorporate a lot of core activation and deep poses so anyone who used to yoga or does a lot of dynamic stretching will be able to quickly master the basics.

If you’ve ever seen a gymnast performing you’ll be aware that as well as being extremely flexible, they all possess incredibly strong cores and one of the main reasons for that is the type of movements that they do on a regular basis. The parallettes can be used to incorporate handstands, balances, planches, push-ups, climbers, planks and dips into your workout.

These are all some of the best bodyweight moves around, but doing them at elevation means you’re working in a wider range of motion, engaging more muscles and making the body work harder. A proper training session on the parallettes will work your back, shoulders, core, chest and arms. It’s also recommended using them to stay in a balanced position for a long period of time.

A parallette workout each week can also be extremely beneficial to your weight training lifts. This can be done by helping to improve your grip, which will translate to success in barbell workouts and as it can be very engaging you’ll burn a ton of body fat and aid lean muscle growth. Plus, with all of the different types of movements, every parallette workout is different so your muscles won’t get complacent. It really is an impressive bit of kit!