Toes to Bar: Leg Exercise or Arm Exercise? How to Train for Different Outcomes
Is this a leg exercise or an arm exercise?
It depends on how it’s taught.
If you lift your toes to the bar, it’s a leg exercise.
If you pull the bar toward your toes, it’s a mid-back exercise.
If you throw the bar toward the ground, it’s a chest exercise.
Which Version Feels the Easiest?
Pulling the bar toward the toes or throwing the bar toward the ground makes the legs feel the lightest.
Which One Is “Right”?
That depends on your goal.
If you're building strength for a pull-over (pulling yourself up and over the bar), the pulling version makes the most sense.
If you train for pole or silks, you might find the throwing version has more crossover.
If you want to isolate hip flexion and feel your quads working, lifting your toes to the bar is the way to go.
In fitness, we often hear that exercises “should” be done a certain way to be “right” or “most effective.” But what’s “right” depends on context.
If you're conditioning for something specific, precision matters.
If you're training for general fitness, the “right” way might just be the one that feels best integrated and successful.
(For the record, I’m doing the “throw the arms toward the floor” version here, which causes my torso to rotate back.)
Movement in Context
Rarely do we isolate joints without some degree of rotation—it’s just not how movement works. That doesn’t mean joint isolation isn’t useful, but in my opinion, it’s best explored in a low-threshold environment where you feel in control.
Toes to bar is typically a doing exercise, often a transition to something else rather than an isolated skill.
Experiment With Different Approaches
This is just one example of a common theme in the fitness and movement world: exercises are often taught as a single method passed down from instructor to instructor. The approach is usually, “Just do it, and you’ll get stronger,” rather than, “Here’s one way to do it—and if that doesn’t work, try these alternatives.”
The best exercise is the one you’ll actually do.
If toes to bar interests you, explore the three approaches above. See which one feels most accessible. Stick with it consistently for 8 weeks, performing 2-4 sets of 2-4 reps, 1-2 times per week. See what happens.
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