gian323 said:
Doorway bars! There we go. I've been thinking of what the hell those were called. Since I'm a big guy but can't do pull/chin ups, and I think that investing in one of those would be good for me.
Is there anything I should know about them?
I had one many years ago when I was a young kid living at home, but I left it there when I moved out. It was a tension mounted thing with saftey brackets in case the tension slipped.
(I'm using gymnastic rings for pullup work at my house now, so I'll probably never need another bar. If I bought a bar instead of the rings, I'd have gone with a "real" mounted pullup bar, not a door mount.)
Good points for the door mount: quick as hell to set up and use. Great workout equipment for hardly any $$$. I loved chinups on that thing...just walking past it all the time you just stopped and did a few chinups just for fun. One of my sisters liked it too.
Bad points: they can slip, expand and/or mess up your doorframe or moulding, depending on the design, and lower the clearance for people to walk under. You should expect some marks/damage at minimum. You'll probably always have to keep tightening the thing, unless it is a newer design that uses a cantilever effect to hold it in place (I haven't used one, but comments on the web indicate these also can still mark up moulding pretty bad, but won't slip).
If you get one, mount it on a closet doorframe, if you can.
