Pull-ups are one of the most fundamental exercises available. They’re up there with the deadlift, back squat, and bench press. And, as far as bodyweight exercises are concerned, they are one of the best you can do. However, many people either completely leave this staple out of their workout routine or stuck with their progress due to less than optimal form. This can be for many reasons, but mostly because pull-ups are just plain difficult.
In reality, though, if you follow the right progressions and keep consistency you’ll be surprised how fast it is to achieve significant results. Once you master the strict pull-up expect great returns with all your lifts.
The Reason You Should Start Doing Pull-Ups
Pull-ups are the king exercise when it comes to building up a wide back, giving you that V shape you’re looking for. This exercise is a great way to strengthen your entire upper body, and it has many other benefits as well.
Joint Friendly
Many popular exercises can be tough on your joints. Take the back squat for example. The bar rests on your shoulders, and when you start loading more and more weight on the bar, it can really compress the vertebrae in your back, put pressure on your knees, back, hips, and shoulders.
Pull-ups, on the other hand, don’t result in joint compression, rather the exact opposite. Because you hang, your joints are pulled apart.
One of the Best Lat Building Exercises
The latissimus dorsi, also known as the lat, is the largest muscle in the back. It is a large, flat muscle that runs down your side starting from the humerus the upper arm bone. It spans all the way across to the spine. Because this muscle is so large, it plays a major part in many upper back exercises and has a large effect on how your back looks.
The lats are also a muscle that connects to the lower body, specifically to the gluteus maximus muscle. These two muscles are linked through the thoracolumbar fascia, and this connection is referred to as the posterior oblique sling system. A study investigated this connection, and they determined that the lats played a large part in the arm swing that occurs during walking and running, and they influence and increase the activity of the muscles in the legs during these motions as well, hence are essential for most athletic abilities.
Finding exercises that properly stimulate this muscle is important and a critical part of any workout routine and the pull up is one of the best for this purpose, since the lats are the primary movers, meaning they are responsible for the majority of the work.
Gets You That V-Shape
The biggest guys in the gym usually have broad shoulders and a skinny waist, giving the appearance of a V-shaped back. Many people think that it is caused solely by having wide shoulders, however, the lats are just as responsible.
Since pull-ups are one of the best ways to activate and strengthen the lats, this is the perfect exercise to add that extra size and definition to your back.
Great for Grip Strengthening
The benefits of having good grip strength go well beyond the gym. Of course, in the gym, having a stronger grip allows you to lift more weight and perform more repetitions. It can also help you in sports where you swing a bat or a racquet. Injury issues can be reduced as well by increasing your wrist, and forearm strength.
Outside of the gym, having more grip strength can make it easier to carry and move things in daily life, such as bags, furniture, groceries. One study even found that having lower grip strength is linked to a higher risk of dying from any cause, especially heart disease; a higher risk of having a stroke; and a higher risk of having a heart attack.
Perfect for Strengthening Your Abs
One of the little known secrets about doing pull-ups is that they are actually great for strengthening your abs. There are about a million and one different exercises that you can choose from to work your abdominals, some being more effective or “functional” than the other.
One test using an EMG calculated the mean and peak activity of various muscles during a number of different ab exercises. The muscles they tested included the rectus abdominis, external oblique, internal oblique, and erector spinae.
Surprisingly enough, the strict form pull up resulted in the highest mean and peak activity for the rectus abdominis, which is the muscle that gives you your six-pack appearance. It even beat out some of the foundational exercises like hanging leg raises, ab wheels, and the plank.
There Are Tons of Variations
Doing the same exercises over and over again can get boring and motivation can drop. But, with pull-ups, there are tons of different variations you can do. The best part is that they all can be done with the same piece of equipment. Many of the variations involve changing up your grip: neutral grip, wide grip, narrow grip, or a reverse grip chin up.
You can also vary up the speed that you do your pull-ups with, whether you pause at certain points during the motion, or even move side to side as you go. All of these variations slightly alter which muscles are being emphasized more and how much strength is needed. These, often isometric pull-ups, are also great for building muscle awareness, the most important factor to build and maintain, especially for beginners.
Low Barrier to Entry
Many of the most popular exercises require specific equipment. Much of the time, this means that you’ll need to have access to barbells with weights available, a rack, and more. But, with a pull-up, all you need is a single bar. What’s even better is that you can do them in your own home with a piece of equipment that only costs a few dollars.
Of course, you can always use a pull-up bar at the gym, but there are multiple styles of pull up bars that you can install inside your own home as well. Many of them offer plenty of extra support. These models often have multiple grip variations as well, allowing you to switch up your workout.
Even if you’re not willing to spend on a quality pull up bar or it’s not convenient for in-home use, you can do this exercise almost anywhere. Many parks around cities have them available, or just use a tree branch if it really comes down to it.
Prerequisites for Pull-Ups
Pull-ups are one of the hardest bodyweight exercises you can do, and many people avoid them for exactly that reason. Correctly performing a pull up requires a large amount of strength and joint mobility and control within the full range of motion. Getting your body in good condition and working on improving your relative strength can make a huge difference in how effectively and how fast you’ll be able to do introduce pull-ups in your workouts.
Bodyweight Considerations
That’s no brainer. Pull-ups require you to lift your entire body which is no easy task if you are carrying around a couple of extra pounds or don’t have much lean muscle mass, to begin with.
Lowering your body fat percentage and total weight can make a huge positive difference, not to mention the other health benefits of the former.
Mobility Requirements
Mobility, or flexibility, is also an important part of the pull-up. It is essential that you have proper mobility in the upper back and shoulders. Your upper back, also known as your thoracic spine, is built to flex forward, extend backward, and rotate. On the other hand, your lower back is meant to provide support and doesn’t move as much.
If your upper back doesn’t have enough motion, your lower back will be forced to hyperextend, which can cause back pain. Lack of thoracic extension can also have a major impact on pull up motion. If your back doesn’t properly extend, it can cause your shoulder blades, or scapulas to not rotate properly when you lift your arms overhead. This makes it so that your muscles can’t properly engage.
Your shoulders also need to be flexible. In order to reach above the head, your shoulder joint has to be able to externally rotate and flex upwards. I highly advise that you build up a routine of shoulder flexibility drills before each upper body workout.
Again, if your shoulders aren’t able to perform these motions or if your thoracic spine can’t extend, it will cause your lower back to overextend. This places pressure on your labrum and biceps tendon and a host of other issues, paving the way for shoulder impingement, often associated with swelling, tender spots, or a torn tendon.
Strength Requirements
Pull-ups not only require you to have strong lats and other back muscles. You have to have strong biceps, a solid grip, good core strength, and most importantly fair amount of horizontal pulling power.
Fortunately, there are lots of different exercises that you can do to get the basic strength built up. We’ll go into the specifics of how to progress your body to the point where you can do a proper pull up.
Muscles Involved in the Pull Up
There are quite a lot of muscles involved in the pull-up, hence once you’re past your first strict pull-up, gains usually come rapidly.
Back/Chest
- Latissimus dorsi
- Middle and lower trapezius
- Pectoralis major
- Pectoralis minor
- Rhomboids
Shoulders/Scapula
- Infraspinatus
- Teres major
- Teres minor
- Deltoids
- Subscapularis
Arms
- Biceps brachii
- Brachialis
- Brachioradialis
- Coracobrachialis
- Muscles of the forearms
- Long head of the triceps
Core/Abdominals
- External obliques
- Erector spinae
- Rectus abdominis
The Pull Up Versus the Chin Up
Many people think of pull-ups and chin-ups as the same exercise, but these two actually work slightly different and vary in difficulty and hand position.
Pull-ups are performed with your hands facing away from you, while you have your palms facing towards you when you do a chin up.
Both of these exercises are initiated by activating your shoulder blades from a dead hang position. These two variations also both recruit the lats very effectively. But, one area of difference is in how the biceps are recruited. There are three main upper arm muscles that work during the pull-up: the biceps brachii, the brachialis, and the brachioradialis. Of these three muscles, the brachioradialis is the weakest one.
In a chin-up, the most emphasis is placed on the biceps brachii and brachialis, which means that your arms are able to effectively help throughout the motion. However, with the pull-up, the brachialis and brachioradialis are the primary movers. The biceps brachii provides little help during the motion, which makes the pull up more difficult to perform.
Muscle activation also differs between the chin-up and pull-up. Chin-ups more effectively target anterior chain activation, including the pecs, abdominals, and biceps. When you do a chin up, your shoulders often come slightly forward because the pecs and biceps are able to engage more to help the body lift up.
The pull-up more affectively activates the posterior chain, such as the trapezius, rear delts to a degree and rhomboids. This is because your elbows are forced to flare out to the sides when the palms are facing forward, which reduces the ability of the biceps and pecs to assist in the movement. Having the elbows out from the body also increases the range of motion for the shoulder.
Proper Pull-Up and Chin-Up Technique
A lot of people include pull-ups in their workout routines, but many of these individuals are also doing them wrong or leaving potential benefits on the table. Some people put quantity over quality, and they completely throw form out the window if it means they can get an extra rep or two done.
You can “cheat” on pull-ups in a few different ways, including kipping and not going all the way up and down to get the full range of motion.
Even if you aren’t doing either of these things, you still could be using poor form and reducing the effectiveness of your reps. There are a few key aspects of your form that need to be focused on to make sure you’re getting the most out of this exercise.
Engage the Shoulders First
First, it is important to note that pull-ups and chin-ups both start by engaging your shoulder blades. Lots of people begin the motion by bending at the elbows. If you do this first, you provide less tension in your back and force your biceps to carry much of the load. While this may cause a pump in your biceps, it doesn’t make this exercise back-dominant as it should be.
Instead, it is important to begin the motion by engaging the back by depressing, aka pulling down your shoulder blades. This causes your shoulders to move away from the neck and from your ears. This ensures that you keep your back engaged throughout the exercise. It also reduces the load placed on the biceps so you can perform more repetitions by spreading the work between more muscles.
After each repetition, it is also important to lower yourself all the way back down until your arms are fully extended. It may seem like keeping your back engaged throughout the whole motion would provide optimal benefits, but this isn’t the case if you are just starting out.
It is important to reengage your shoulder blades at the beginning of each rep. This ensures that you are using proper form and doesn’t allow you to cheat by using momentum or overusing certain secondary muscles.
Focus on the Top of the Movement
You may start each repetition properly, but it’s easy to lose your form near the top. If you find your shoulders shrugged up next to your ears, you may need to reassess your movement.
It’s also important to make sure that you are bringing yourself all the way up with your chin at or above the level of the bar. These form issues often become even worse and more common when you begin adding weight to your pull-ups and chin-ups prematurely.
Strict Form versus Arched Back
There are different schools as to the best way to position your upper body during a pull-up.
Some people like to arch and overextend their back so that they are bringing their chest up towards the bar first, making their upper body angle more horizontal.
Other people prefer to keep their core and abdominals engaged throughout the motion, maintaining a straight line (or rather curved on the front side of the body) from the shoulders to the hips. Using this second form is also known as a hollow body pull-up (or strict pull-up or tactical pull-up). Each of these forms are associated with specific benefits.
The hollow body pull-up has the advantage of working your core. This provides a complete upper body exercise that effectively works all the major muscle groups. Also by putting the latissimus in a disadvantageous, stretched position it makes it work harder and in a greater range of motion (ROM). Engaging the front, or even tilting your pelvis back for a hollow body, basically means that you turn off your back a little. This is why it’s very challenging to do pull-ups for reps this way…let alone L-sit pull-ups for the very same reason.
With the arched back version, people also tend to not straighten their arms on the bottom hang position but rather keep them a bit extended. This can further decrease ROM. It’s a mind game, beginners often think they will struggle with the next repetition more if they descend all the way to a full hang with their arms completely straight and their lats stretched.
In general, this shouldn’t be the case. Try using a full ROM, unless you specifically want to work on weaknesses or strengthen certain angles isometrically.
Performing the tactical pull-up requires that you activate both your posterior and anterior muscle chains at the same time. While this is possible, it is very difficult to do properly. This makes it easy to lose your form and can significantly reduce the number of repetitions you are able to do. But that’s the whole point. Make the exercise harder and progress longer before proceeding to more advanced means or adding weight.
On the other hand, to be fair, arched back pull-ups allow you to focus more on your posterior chain and create a good mind-muscle connection with your back. Instead of contracting your core, you simply allow your back to fall into extension. It’s often heard that arching your lower back is not healthy and can hurt your spine during exercise. However, this may only be a concern when pull-ups are carried out with a lack of control or with an exaggerated swing motion.
Arched back pull-ups position your upper body more parallel to the ground and this way resemble more to a row with regard to the angle of the pull. This emphasizes the muscles involved with shoulder retraction as opposed to shoulder depression which is more the case with straight vertical body pull-ups like the tactical or hollow-body pull-up.
That is why if you are one of those who are strong with horizontal rows, then probably you would prefer the arched back version to capitalize on your advantage.
The Legs
What you do with your legs also affects muscle engagement during a pull-up, especially in the abdominals. The three things to do with your legs are to either have them out slightly in front of your body, hang them straight down, or to cross them at the ankles.
Letting your legs hang straight down or pulling them a bit further out front (hollow body position), requires that your core engages to provide stability. Again, this makes the exercise more difficult, but also provides better core strengthening. If you cross your ankles though, it helps to provide extra stability and takes the load off your core, making the exercise a bit easier.
Turning on your core, engaging the front of your body is the opposite (antagonist) movement of how your back muscles function, moving your body into extension. The two opposing muscle groups and functions are kind of like competing with each other. That is why people rather let go of their core so that their back can work with better leverage and complete a pull-up not possible otherwise with their abs locked.
How to Start? Progressions to Your First Pull Up
There are many different ways that you can progress your strength and flexibility to work up to doing a pull up.
Grip Strength
For some people, grip strength is a limiting factor. If you aren’t able to hold onto the bar for an extended period of time, you won’t be able to perform your maximum number of repetitions. One way to work on your grip strength is to simply hang from the bar as long as you can.
A general grip strength prerequisite for pull-ups would be hanging from the bar for at least 1 minute. You need to pass this test in order to start a program with full confidence.
Every time you do it, try to hold on for longer and longer to build up your grip strength. When that starts to get easier, you can try holding on with just one or two fingers or wrap something around the bar to make it thicker and tougher to hold onto. Or put a towel over the bar and grip its ends. That’s as specific as it can be for towel pull-ups later which is a great way to challenge your workout.
Scapular Pull-Ups
If your back strength is the limiting factor or if you struggle to engage your shoulder blades and lats, setting them down at the beginning, performing scapular pull-ups is a good place to start.
This involves only doing the initial movement of the pull-up. When you do a scapular pull up, your arms should not engage at all, they should remain straight the whole time. This ensures that you learn how to properly set your shoulders and lats to provide a strong base and initiation for the rest of the pull-up motion.
Ring/TRX Rows, Heavy Dumbbell Rows
Performing rows on a TRX or on a set of rings is a great way to become familiar with the muscles used to retract and depress your scapula, which will make it easier to perform full pull up repetitions.
To begin this progression, you should start with your feet directly under the rings and the rings about chest height. Drop your body back, your body in a straight line, then engage your shoulder blades as you pull upwards until your chest reaches the rings. Then, return your body down to the starting position.
As this becomes easier, you can begin to walk your feet farther and farther forward to the point that your body is parallel with the ground. Because of the increased pull of gravity, the more parallel your body is, the harder your muscles have to work.
Dumbbell rows are also a great way to build up strength. So much so, that even if you’ve never done pull-ups before you’ll be able to perform a few.
Static Holds and Negative Pull-Ups or Chin-Ups
You can also build up strength through static holds. To perform these, jump or step up so that you are in the top position of a pull up on either a bar or rings. Be sure to keep all of your muscles engaged and your shoulder blades pinched together and down. Your shoulders should not be up towards your ears. Try to hold this position for as long as you can. If it’s too hard, wrap one end of a rubber band around the bar, the other end around your leg or knee for extra help.
Once the static holds become easier, you should progress to negative pull-ups or chin-ups. To perform these, begin in the same position as a static hold. Then, slowly lower your body all the way down until your arms are fully extended and your back is relaxed. Be sure to lower yourself down slowly, taking at least five seconds to reach the bottom. After reaching full extension, jump back up and begin the next rep.
The Full, Strict Chin-Up and Pull-Up
Once you have mastered negative pull-ups or chin-ups, it’s time to try the full motion. Chin-ups are easier to do than pull-ups, so it’s usually best to start with those. Make sure to use the form that we outlined above in the article. Then, once you are able to do a few chin-ups, try performing a pull-up.
Common Mistakes
Some of the mistakes people make may just result in less than maximal muscle activation, but others can actually cause physical issues. Because of this, it is important to pay close attention to your form so you can protect your body in the long term and get the most out of your exercise.
The following video explains the importance of keeping your spine and scapulas from entering an excessive anterior tilt and extension. It hits on the proper form and the cues you should look for.
Core Engagement
It is important to note that all pull-up styles are okay if you know the purpose and have sufficient control. However, for the sake of longevity and faster/solid bodyweight strength gains, I prefer the strict pull-up over other forms.
This is especially important for beginners because this form will allow them to stabilize their technique before trying other variations. Many beginners are prone to hyperextending their spines at the beginning of the movement because it allows them to gain a mechanical advantage mentioned earlier and compensate for lack of shoulder mobility or general back weakness.
To avoid this back hyperextension, you need to keep your core engaged so that your feet are hanging out in front of your body, or at least directly underneath.
Again, there’s no such thing as a bad pull up so far the individual understands the purposes. However, to solidify your pull-up technique I recommend shooting for the hollow body type pull up which due to its complexities should ensure a strong base for later progressions.
Head Movement Affects Your Shoulders
While it may not seem important, controlling your head motion has a large impact on your pull up form. If you extend your head backward to look up towards the ceiling, it causes your back to wanting to overextend.
This form turns the pull up into more of a row motion because your chest becomes more parallel to the floor. Also, in this position, your joints will not physically allow you to complete a full pull up.
Try to keep your core and glutes fairly tight, your head in a neutral position to prevent your ribcage from coming forward.
On the contrary, it’s important that beginners don’t stress too much about core engagement possibly inhibiting thoracic extension. Find a middle ground neutral position that allows your thoracic spine to extend while keeping your core engaged.
Pull-Up Variations
One of the best things about pull-ups is that there are so many different ways you can do them. This means that you can hit your muscles from different angles and that you’ll never get bored of doing the same movement over and over.
Also, this is the very reason why calisthenics can keep your shoulders bulletproof. Experimenting with a mixed grip and width and just in general, spending a lot of time both active and passive hanging, can make wonders for the flexibility of the connective tissues around the shoulder, promoting better posture and long term shoulder health.
The Scap Pull Up
Scapula pull-ups are a great progression into a full pull up. However, they are also a great strength exercise to add to your workouts. Just doing the normal scap pull up as we outlined above in the progressions section is great for increasing muscle activation, but you can also add protraction and retraction to do circles with your scapulas aka pulling and pushing them apart as an added bonus to depressing and elevating them.
Varied Grip Pull-Ups
Pull-ups can be performed with different grips so that you can hit all muscle groups effectively.
Rings: Since rings move, it allows for complete freedom of movement. They are also not hard on the wrists, elbows, and shoulders.
Neutral Grip: Performing pull-ups with your palms facing one another is easy on the shoulder and elbow and activates all muscles effectively.
Mixed Grips and Widths: You can switch up your grips and hand widths to attack different muscle groups. You can have one palm facing forward and another backward, or play with wider and narrower hand positions.
Different Grips: Using ropes, handles, blocks, towels and other grips can challenge your strength.
Fast/Slow
Performing pull-ups very slowly is a great way to make sure your muscles are strong at every point during the motion. You can also use isometric holds to increase strength.
Top Position Holds
The top position holds were another position we discussed earlier. By jumping up and holding the top position of the pull up for as long as you can, you can get used to having your lats activated and your shoulder blades depressed and retracted while building strength.
Commando Pull Up
Commando pull-ups are done standing directly below the pull-up bar and grabbing it with both palms facing in. Pull yourself up so your head goes slightly on one side of the bar. Alternate the side your head is on each rep. Make sure to switch your hand positions between sets as well.
Accessory Exercises to Strengthen the Pull Up
Practicing pull-ups over and over is one way to strengthen the necessary muscles. However, there are also many other exercises you can do to build up this strength to make doing pull-ups easier. No surprise here, the muscles that generally need extra strengthening are the pulling muscles. These are often not as strong as your pushing muscles, such as your pecs and triceps.
Deadlifts
Deadlifts are a great exercise for the whole back. It requires you to activate your entire posterior chain, including the back of your legs, your lats, traps, and erector spinae. Using the proper form for this exercise is critical, but it is a great way to strengthen your back.
Lat Pulldowns
Lat pulldowns can help teach you to better control your shoulder blades and activate your lats. The pulldown machine is designed to mimic the movement of a pull-up, but it is slightly different. Since you are pulling the bar down towards you, the bar can move, which makes it a bit easier.
The position of your legs also causes your hip flexors to be recruited in the motion, especially with higher weights. This makes the pull even less realistic.
Still, lat pulldowns can be a great way to jumpstart your back and begin building the muscles necessary for a pull-up.
Chest Supported Row
Rows are one of the best exercises you can do to strengthen your back muscles. This motion is a great way to stimulate your lats, rhomboids, traps, rear delts needed for the pull-up. To perform this exercise, support your chest on a bench or pad, and perform a row motion with either a barbell or dumbbells. Supporting the chest prevents you from using momentum stimulating mind-muscle connection.
Single-Arm Row
Single-arm rows help increase back and grip strength and done with heavy weights are also a great anti-rotation core and whole-body strength exercise. The latter being critical for pull-ups. When doing this exercise, it is important to keep your back flat and in a neutral position and be sure to properly engage your back with every rep to prevent using momentum.
This exercise differs from the chest supported row because it is unilateral movement, meaning that it is done on only one side of the body. Since only one arm is being used, the core is forced to stabilize the body during the motion. This movement also requires a higher amount of muscle coordination, which increases muscle recruitment when compared to bilateral rows, such as the chest supported row.
Bicep Curls
Your biceps are secondary movers in the pull-up, so you may want to hit them every now and then. Performing a variety of different bicep curls should do fine keeping it conditioned for when it comes to helping lift your body.
How to Stay Healthy Long Term
The pull up is a fundamental exercise to strengthen your entire upper body, but it can also contribute to shoulder and spine problems if you don’t train the correct way. Many people think of the pull up as an exercise that would improve your posture by bringing your shoulders back. This is partially true by creating extension through the back. However, shoulder-vise, the lats create internal rotation, just like the pectoralis muscle, and these two powerful players can create hunched shoulders.
Because of this, it is important to properly train other, smaller muscle groups as well to counterbalance the bigger muscles especially if trained with high volumes of pull-ups. Great exercises to do this are horizontal rows and exercises that create shoulder external rotation and activate the rear delts.
Cable face pulls, seated bent-over lateral raises, the banded no-money exercise, W raises all target the rhomboids, rear deltoids, teres, and middle and lower trapezius.
Another important part of staying healthy is building up the strength – mentioned earlier – before trying more difficult pull-up variations. A good rule of thumb is being able to complete eight to 10 repetitions with strict form – straight or hollow body –, before attempting other, more difficult pull-ups. This foundational strength can also reduce the chance of injuries in the future.
How to Program
So, you decided that you want to start throwing more pull-ups into your workout, but how many should you do and how often? There are infinite answers to this question, and everyone will always have a million reasons why their workout program works.
It is true that every person’s body responds differently to exercise, so there is no single correct answer. However, there are a few principles that should be followed when setting up a workout program, and each one is designed to produce results in a specific way. It is important to try a few different techniques to see which one your body responds to best.
Training for Mass versus Strength
One of the most important things to account for is whether you are training for mass or strength gains. When you are training for muscle mass or hypertrophy, you generally perform sets of high repetitions with minimal rest between sets. Also, you typically incorporate more exercises in one session to create accumulated fatigue, such as cable rows, lat pulldowns, chest supported rows often programmed in supersets.
This isn’t to say that training for strength won’t result in large muscles, but it also carries other benefits, such as neural adaptations. These adaptations allow for increased muscle fiber recruitment. These benefits are most often seen when performing a higher number of sets (3 to 10+) of a low number of reps (1 to 6).
One training program that is focused on building strength recommends starting out by performing 3 sets of 5 reps during your first week. Then, each week, you should increase the number of sets by one, but decrease the number of reps by one as well. Be sure to adjust your added weight or resistance bands used accordingly.
Rest is critical in this type of training. You should be taking at least two to three minutes. This may seem like a long time, but it is important to wait so you can recover enough. It is also important to manage fatigue. If you are just starting out with pull-ups, training more often in lower volumes lead to better improvements, as otherwise. Overtraining doesn’t allow your muscles to fully recover, and you won’t be able to train frequent enough, and/or heavy enough to stress adaptation.
Reverse Pyramid Training
Reverse pyramid training involves performing 3 sets of increasing reps. This routine should only be used if you are able to do a single set of eight strict pull-ups without breaking form. For example, you should target 6 to 8 reps in the first set, 8 to 10 in the second set, and 10 to 12 in the third set.
This setup is challenging because you are forcing your body to perform more repetitions with each set. Because of this, using resistance bands to aid your pull-ups is often necessary, especially for beginners. An example of a starting set would be to perform a set of bodyweight pull-ups for the first set, then use a light and medium resistance band in the second and third sets.
If you are at or above the top of the rep range for a certain set, you should progress that specific set by either adding weight or lowering the band resistance. Be sure to progress slowly so that you do not make one set way too difficult as this can make the rest of the sets too hard and less effective overall.
The Greasing the Groove Principle
Greasing the groove is a principle built on the idea that performing a high volume of repetitions of a particular exercise without going to total muscle failure will allow the brain to form new neural pathways, making the muscles work better and increasing your strength and endurance. Relating to pull-ups, this principle says that if you want to get better at pull-ups, you should do them more frequently.
When you contract a muscle during an exercise, every muscle fiber does not contract, meaning that you are performing repetitions with submaximal strength. To increase the recruitment of these fibers, your brain needs to form new neural pathways so that the neurons can fire more frequently. Neural pathways can also be formed to help muscles fire in tandem to work more effectively together, which is especially important in compound movements like the pull-up.
The only way to form these pathways is by practicing the movement over and over again. Muscle memory plays a large role in performance, and the more comfortable your muscles are with a certain motion, the better they can execute it.
To practice the grease the groove principle, frequent training is critical. This means performing reps every day. Doing a few reps every hour or two throughout the day will help to create these new neural pathways. But, you should not approach muscle failure. This means that you should not be sore from training the day after or experience the slowdown of execution. As soon as you can’t pull as fast as your first rep, that’s the end of the set.
You should also vary your training. Some days, you may choose to do a higher number of repetitions every two hours, but other days you may do a set every 30 minutes of only a few reps. Training the brain to respond to different training intensities and volumes will optimize your body’s ability to better adapt to and perfect an exercise.
Final Thoughts
All in all, pull-ups are a fantastic exercise that everyone should try to incorporate into their workout routines. As intense as they are they produce incredible results in short time compared to other exercises. While building up the initial strength and perfecting the correct form may be difficult, once you’ ready to hit them for reps with good form the results will be quite impressive.
After building up some foundational strength, trying out various grips and rep patterns can be a great way to continue to stimulate muscle and strength growth. Feel free to experiment with all sorts of little adjustments to your technique as well, as the essence of training all comes down to building body awareness.
When trying new pull up variations, make sure to pay attention to how your body feels and reacts during the exercise and the upcoming days as well, so that you can be sure the new exercises are beneficial for you and you are “qualified” to perform them.
If you notice a certain movement is causing pain, you shouldn’t push through. Don’t train over pain. Stop, evaluate, and regress if you need to, or consult a professional. Starting out with your workouts, especially home workouts, it’s best to keep things simple and only work with a few exercises. This makes it easier to identify which movements could cause issues the next day; oftentimes pain is not immediately detectable.
While pull-ups are a great exercise, you can’t build your entire workout routine with only pull up variations. That’s overkill. It is critical to perform a variety of exercises that hit all the major muscle groups in the body, the more evenly the better. This will encourage proper muscle development and reduce the chance of developing muscle compensations, asymmetries, or joint problems.
Although it’s ok to put more emphasis on certain movements even for prolonged periods, keep in mind the body always wants to revert to balance, and the more you deviate from it the more is at stake.
A pull-up bar is among if not the best low-cost home gym investment there is to skyrocket your progress.
