Word on the street is that an entirely new generation of exercise technique is just around the corner. The latest system comes not from fitness clubs, sports, martial arts or even the military; this time it’s from the streets. The streets of Brooklyn, New York City, to be precise.
Earlier forms of urban expression in and around New York City included hip-hop and break-dance, but the city playground has changed.
The spate of rudimentary outdoor gyms cropping up all over major western cities has borne witness to the latest fusion of street culture and physical activity.
When break-dance meets gymnastics and mainstream fitness training, you get ‘barmetrics’, a hybrid performance art whose practitioners require nothing more than high bars for pull-ups, parallel bars for dips and the ground we walk on.
With this simple apparatus, groups or ‘crews’ perfect public displays of intricate and complex moves, demonstrating confidence, endurance, agility, flexibility and, above all, power.
Rival crews show their skills in battles conducted over Youtube, or head to head at B-Xtreme, the official annual barmetrics tournament held in Brooklyn.
The performances consist of moves built around pull-ups. Flips and turns are thrown into the fray, as well as dynamic moves where one or both hands at a time leave contact with the bar.
The strength and endurance required to perform about 40 consecutive pull-ups seems to be a general rule of thumb for these remarkable athletes. On the parallel bars, the moves are a crude form of gymnastics with an emphasis on power, not finesse. The exercises target every muscle of the upper body, and truly blitz the core.
Various crews and individuals have gained online acclaim as a result of this craze, like the ‘Bartendaz’, a band of brothers who even sell their own merchandise. With all the attitude you’d expect of hip hop ‘gangsters’, they espouse a distinctly non-violent message with their motto, ‘Physical fitness, self-empowerment’.
While such crews focus more on the artistry of barmetrics, others have chosen instead to focus exclusively on fitness. One such man is Hannibal, not the leader of the A-Team, or the psychotic cannibal Hannibal Lecter, but simply Hannibal, the panther-like African-American king of street fitness.
In his DVD Hannibal for King, and numerous online videos, Hannibal demonstrates his impressive muscular physique and the signature moves he uses to sculpt it. In addition to the high bar and parallel bars, he also incorporates floor work and a large variety of press-up variations.
His exploits have earned him coverage in some top fitness and bodybuilding publications, as well as making him the subject of much debate on internet forums.
Another colourful character to emerge out of the street fitness sensation is Mr Dynamic, the ultimate press-up master. Watch this man in action and you’ll never see the press-up the same way again.
We’ve all seen fit guys show off by clapping their hands between press-up repetitions; well this guy doesn’t just clap his hands, he can touch both knees, either shoulder, and even flip his entire body round 360˚ and land straight back into his next press-up repetition.
If you thought bodyweight moves were easy, just check out Hannibal online. If you still think it looks easy, wait until you see members of the Bartendaz crew perform pull-ups and dips with their friends holding on, essentially doubling the resistance.
The bottom line is, spicing things up on the bar is an excellent way to stay in shape, have fun and look incredibly cool while doing it.
In honour of barmetrics, I will leave you with one of their signature moves, for advanced trainees only. It is possibly the most complete single exercise for the entire upper body in existence; it is the ‘muscle up’, Hannibal style.
The muscle up is essentially a pull-up combined with a dip. You should be able to do at least 10 full range repetitions of both pull-ups and dips before even attempting this move, and make sure you use a sturdy pull-up bar under a high ceiling you can’t hit your head on. It’ll take plenty of practice before you get it right, so prepare yourself for a challenge.
Start the muscle up with an overhand pull-up, with a slightly-wider-than-shoulder-width grip on the bar. Pull up explosively, because you will need enough momentum to swing up and bring your chest up and over the top of the bar.
A crucial difference to regular pull-ups here is that you should not attempt to pull your chin straight up towards the bar. Instead, keep your head and chest as far away from the bar as you can as you ascend. You may also use some swing in the legs to get up and over. Try to get your chest over the bar and rest onto it. During this phase of the movement your back and biceps are heavily engaged.
Next, the dip phase begins and the chest and triceps take over. Press down on the bar and straighten your arms to complete the move.
If you can perform multiple repetitions of this exercise, combine it with some running and bodyweight squats, and you’ve just performed a full-body workout. The urban fitness movement has arrived, and superior fitness for you might very literally be just down the street.
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