3 Essential Parallette Exercises For Beginners

Make the most of your parallettes with these home-gym exercises

Parallettes are an amazing bit of kit – small, inexpensive, and portable. The best bit? You can do so much with them. Parallettes take your bodyweight training to another level, working on strength, stability, balance, flexibility, and every major muscle group.

What Are Parallettes?

Parallettes are a pair of low bars which you use to do bodyweight exercises and calisthenics moves. They are easy to store, transport, and use. All you need it a bit of space and your own bodyweight.

5 Benefits Of Training On Parallettes

#1 Strength and stability. Use parallettes to train the planche, L-sits, handstands, and handstand push ups, building amazing strength and control

#2 Balance. Parallette exercises encourage phenomenal balance as you slowly control your own bodyweight through a series of movements

#3 Floor clearance. Using parallettes gives you extra space off the floor, making it easier to get started with moves like L-sits and planches

#4 Wrist strength. Using parallettes protects your delicate wrist joints from strain and pressure when doing balances

#5 Variety. You can do much with parallettes, including presses, balancing, core work, flexibility work, mobility, and bodyweight

3 Parallette Exercises Anyone Can Try

Perhaps the best known parallette exercise in the planche or straddle planche, but it can be tricky for beginners to master. Start with simpler exercises and make the most of your parallettes straight out of the box!

L-sit

Get into a dip position with your hands on the parallettes. Press down to lift your body up, keeping your legs straight out in front of you. To make this easier, do a tucked L-sit, with your knees tucked into your chest.

Works: core, abs, obliques, arms, shoulders

Incline press ups

Do a press up but with your hands on the parallettes. This means you can get a deeper range of movement and go lower at the bottom of the press. Go slowly and keep it controlled.

Works: chest, shoulders, lats, core

Parallel kick through

Start in a press up position with arms locked out. Work up to getting your legs through in a tucked position, bringing your body up until you are in a dip position (like the tucked L-sit above). To complete the move, kick your legs through to an extended L-sit position. Challenging but achievable!

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