The infamous pull-up that oh so many people struggle with: how does one go about doing more of them? There is the classic plan-just doing more pull-ups every workout. This attempt depends on the hope that by just doing more of them, the amount you can do in one set till failure will increase. This may work for a time, and get you from 5 to 7 pull-ups (figure 1), but is this the best way to go about this?
Figure 1:
Little guy doing pull-ups.
In my experience, the answer to the above question is no. A way
to increase the number of pull-ups you can do is to add variety to your pull-up
programing. When I say “variety,” I’m talking about vertical pull variations,
horizontal pull variations, super sets, weighted pulls, ultra-high repetition
pulls, and varying grips with all the aforementioned ways to add variety.
Another point to take into consideration is that pull-ups
are a relative strength exercise because your body is the resistance, so the number
you can do is relative to your weight. I’ve discussed this concept of relative
strength in my other article, Strength is King.
I see most people in the gym attempting to increase how many
pull-ups they can do, using only higher repetition/muscular endurance methods.
If you only do higher repetition work, you are missing a huge piece of the
puzzle. That piece is absolute strength. Back strength is possibly more
important when it comes to increasing the amount of pull-ups you can do.
For example, imagine a 200-pound male that can do 10
pull-ups. His body weight is a certain percentage, let’s say ~75%, of his
maximum. If he does only muscular endurance exercise, his weight, relative to
his absolute strength, stays at the same percentage. If that relative
percentage of his maximal back strength decreases, the amount of effort that
goes into completing each rep decreases as well. With the endurance exercises,
your strength increase may be same or minimal, which is probably where the
increase in the amount of pull-ups you can do comes from. The second
possibility is that the endurance work has only taught you to grind through 1-2
more reps. If you increase your strength, however, your body weight relative to
your maximal strength “feels lighter.” Then, your body weight is, for this example,
60% of your maximal strength. When your body weight is a lower percentage of
your max, you will be able to do more pull-ups.
Simply put, do heavy weighted pull-ups in the 6-8 rep range,
and switch up grips. You will be stronger-or weaker-with different grip
variations. Heavy lat pulldowns following the heavy weighted pull-ups are
beneficial, too.
If you can’t get one pull-up, still work on increasing your
strength. You will need to focus more on relatively heavy lat pulldowns and
rows.
This is just one of the major problems I notice when people
are trying to increase the amount of pull-ups they can do. There are tons of
pull variations and little things that you can change around, but I find that
keeping it simple and using vertical (e.g, pull-up variations, lat pulldowns)
and horizontal pulls (e.g. single arm rows, T-bar rows) are a good place to begin.
Before you know it you’ll be doing pull-ups like a champ (figure 2).
Figure 2: Guy
who has a strong back doing a lot of pull-ups.
Ryan Goodell, CSCS
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