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Your First Pull-up (by Jeremy Likness)
One of the most common training-related questions I receive is: How do I get strong enough to perform a
full pull-up? Let's analyze the pull-up and create a plan of attack!
I'm going to talk about the wide-grip pull-up here. There are many variations of the
pull-up. One variation commonly referred to as a "chin-up" involves a very close grip
with palms facing you. The wide-grip pull-up is typically performed with palms
facing away. When I train my clients, I try to make a baseline for reference.
How Is a Pull-up Defined?
For grip, I consider this baseline to be the distance between your hands when they
are hanging comfortably by your sides. This is what I call a "standard grip width."
Anything inside of this is narrow grip, and anything outside of this is wide grip. A
wide-grip pull-up means hands slightly outside of standard grip width, and palms
facing away.
Any exercise that involves a large number of larger
muscles is referred to as a "compound" exercise. A squat is a prime example - the
squat utilizes over 70% of your body's muscles! A curl is not considered a compound
movement. The major muscle involved is the biceps, and there are several other
muscles that assist the movement, but they are neither large nor major muscles.
A wide-grip pull-up, on the other hand, not only incorporates your large back
muscles (lattisimus dorsi), but involves your biceps, your forearm muscles, and
several other muscles as well. Therefore, it qualifies as a "compound" movement
(movement is another term for exercise).
Any movement that causes more than one joint to move ("flexion of a joint") is a
multi-joint movement. During a wide-grip pull-up, the angle of your wrist, elbow,
and shoulders will change. This qualifies the pull-up as a multi-joint movement.
Okay, so we want to perform our first, full rep of this multi-joint movement.
What Happens During A Pull Up?
Let's explore the dynamics of the movement and find out what we need to focus on. The start of the movement
involves drawing your shoulder blades together - this is known as scapular retraction. This is the portion of the
movement that involves your back muscles ("lats"). This portion begins the lift, so tension remains on the back
throughout the movement.
The next portion of the movement involves drawing your body upwards. This requires flexion of the elbow joint,
or the bending of your arms. In order to flex the elbow joint, the biceps and supporting muscles are called into
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play. This, therefore, is another critical link in the pull-up: your biceps.
Keep in mind that throughout this movement, you are grasping the bar. This requires strong forearm muscles. At
the end of the movement, when you begin to lower yourself, your triceps and shoulders come into play by
exerting force against the pull of gravity to control your descent. Now the rep is complete!
How do You Improve Your Pull-up?
As you can see, a lot happened during our pull-up. The first thing I would like to focus on is grip strength. Many
lifters insist on using "lifting straps" to allow them to grasp much heavier weights. While this can allow targeting
of certain muscle groups, it also keeps the wrists from developing! If you find that your weakness with a pull-up
is grip strength, then wrist flexions and extensions are the key for improving your grip. You can kneel in front of
a standard bench, placing your forearms across the bench.
For wrist extensions, you grasp a barbell or dumbbell with palms facing the floor.
Bend your wrist completely down, and then extend it so your palms are facing
straight ahead or slightly upwards. Return to the start position. For wrist flexions,
you repeat the exercise with palms facing up. At the bottom of the movement, allow
the bar to roll to your fingertips, then roll it back up and finish with your palms
facing you. Perform these exercises once or twice per week in addition to your other
workouts to improve grip strength.
Many people find that upper arm strength is a weakness. The biceps play a major
role in executing a proper pull-up. By performing curls and hammers, you can
strengthen the upper arm. Remember to balance biceps exercises with triceps
exercises - for every "pull" biceps movement, you should perform a similar amount of
sets and reps with a "push" triceps movement, either in the same work or another,
unless you are specifically trying to correct a pre-existing imbalance.
Finally, the back itself comes into play. One way to eliminate the wrists and biceps to focus directly on the back
is scapular retractions. You can hang as if performing a pull-up. Begin the pull-up movement, but stop when
your arms start to bend. The range of motion is very slight - you simply flex your back muscles to pull your
shoulder blades together - but this will strengthen the back and by-pass any "weak links" such as wrists and
biceps.
If you have access to an assisted pull-up machine, you can progressively lighten the
amount of assistance until you are ready to perform a full, unassisted pull-up. If you
have a partner, they can wrap their arms around your legs and help assist with the
pull-up.
One trick with an assisted pull-up is to push the legs in the horizontal plane, so that
you perform the pull-up at an angle with your chest underneath the bar and legs
pushed farther out in front of you. This allows more loading on the back, targets the
back more directly, and can help develop the strength necessary to perform a full,
unassisted pull-up.
How Do I Perform More Reps?
This is a question that I am often asked. Many people mistakenly believe that
multiple pull-up reps are a function of strength. Therefore, once they complete their first full rep, they begin
to load weights and get heavier and stronger. While this is an effective way to grow the muscles of the back and
gain strength, it won't translate to being able to perform more repetitions.
In order to perform more repetitions, you must train the local muscular
endurance for that pull-up. The best way to train for higher reps is to train
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with higher reps. If you are at the 12-rep range, for example, I would recommend a training protocol where you
stagger the rest between sets in order to improve. Here is an example:
Week 1:
Monday: 1 set 10 reps, rest 2 minutes, 1 set 10 reps, rest 2 minutes, 1 set 10 reps
Thursday: 1 set to failure
Week 2: reduce rest to 1:30
Week 3: reduce rest to 1:15
Week 4: reduce rest to 1:00
Week 5: reduce rest to 0:45
Week 6: reduce rest to 0:30
Week 7: increase sets to 13 reps each, increase rest to 1:00 so you are doing: 1 set, 13 reps, rest 1 minute, 1
set, 13 reps, rest 1 minute, etc
Week 8: reduce rest to 0:45
Week 9: reduce rest to 0:30
It is very important on the Monday workouts to not go to failure - even if you have it in you to do more, stop at
the prescribed rep level. We are manipulating rest to bring the reps closer to each other to improve your local
muscular endurance, and don't want to fry your system - and Thursday, it is literally just do your warm-up then
knock out as many at bodyweight as you can.
Chances are, by Week 9, you will be able to knock out 20 pull-ups on your Thursday workout.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are a myriad of factors that come into play when training for your first pull-up. The key is
to identify what resources you have to work with, and discover what your weaknesses are. You can then form a
"plan of attack" that culminates with your first successful pull-up!
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03/26/2004 - 08:01:50 PM in Strength Training - edit
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