Do More Pull-ups Quick With These Six Techniques
Pull-ups aren't easy. To lift your entire body weight with just your arms take a serious amount of strength. It can take a lot of dedicated effort to do your first pull-up, and even more to get stronger and do more pull-ups.
Despite their difficulty, pull-ups are an important primary movement for calisthenics. This is because they are a compound movement that loads numerous large muscle groups at once, to train efficiently. If you're doing calisthenics training, you're going to be doing a lot of pull-ups. Here are a couple of ways to get a few more reps:
If you're still working on getting your first pull-up, or get up to a few in a row, you might want to work on your abs a bit more. You may not realize it, but you need decently strong abs to do pull-ups. Your abs kick in to keep your lower body under control, and your back from overly arching. Try adding this ab workout to your existing training to bring your abdominal strength up.
Another helpful method, if you can do more than a few pull-ups, is greasing the groove. To 'grease the groove', you're going to do many sets of pull-ups throughout the day, but you're only going to do a few reps per set. This will give your body practice doing reps of pull-ups, without tiring you out. Because you're going to be doing pull-ups throughout the day, you're going to need somewhere convenient to do them, like a doorway pull-up bar.
Begin this routine by testing your max pull-ups, and recording what half of that max is. You should then do sets of that many pull-ups several times a day. If you start to feel fatigued from your grease the groove sets, you're doing too many pull-ups. Aim to accumulate reps without wearing yourself out.
The Russian fighter pull-up program will have you doing five sets of pull-ups, five days a week. On day one, you'll do your max reps, followed by a set of one less rep, then another set of one less rep than the last, and on, until you reach five sets.
For example, if you could do five pull-ups in the first set, your first day would look like this:
Set12345Reps54321
Each following day, you would add one rep to the set with the lowest number of reps. If multiple sets had the same number of reps, then you would add the rep to the earliest set.
Days two through twelve would look like this:
Set12345Day 254322Day 354332Day 454333Day 554433Day 6RestDay 7RestDay 854443Day 954444Day 1055444Day 1155544Day 1255554
You can continue progressing with this pattern as long as you can keep up.
Another simple pulling workout is the classic ladder workout. Start climbing the ladder by doing one pull-up in your first set. Then, do two pull-ups in your second set. Continue with three, four, five, and so on until you fail to match the number of reps. Proceed to climb back down the ladder, going down one rep each set until you reach one.
If going up by single reps is too slow for you, there are a few ways to ramp this workout up. You could simply double the number of reps each set. Begin with two, then four, six, and so on. Another option is to limit your rest between sets to increase the intensity. Take as many deep breaths as you did reps between each set. If you did one rep, take one deep breath. Two reps, take two deep breaths.
Armstrong Pull-up Program
The Armstrong pull-up program is another intense five day program. This program has four different workouts for Monday through Thursday, and you repeat the most difficult of the four on Friday. This program also prescribes three max sets of push-ups each morning. The claim is that these three sets will reduce soreness, but feel free to skip them if you choose.
Monday:
On Monday, your workout is simply 5 max rep sets. Do each set to failure, and rest ninety seconds between each set. Don't worry about the numbers for this day, just make sure you go to failure.
Tuesday:
Next up: ladder sets. You're going to start your first set with one rep, your next set with two, then three, and so on. Once you reach a point that you can't do the prescribed number of reps, you reverse and go back down rep by rep. The rest prescription for this day is ten seconds per rep.
Wednesday:
Today you're going to do three sets of normal grip pull-ups, three sets of chin-ups, and three sets of wide grip pull-ups. You'll rest only sixty seconds between sets, so be careful to pick a number of reps that you know you can complete all nine sets of.
Thursday:
For the second to last day, you're going to do as many sets of pull-ups as you can, until you fail to do complete another full set. Do as many reps per set as you did for Wednesday. Rest sixty seconds between sets, again like you did Wednesday. If you can do more than nine sets on this day, do more reps per set next Wednesday.
Friday:
Finally, we're going to repeat whichever of the previous four days felt hardest. If you're not sure which day was the hardest, pick whichever you liked least. You could also replace this day with weighted pull-ups, or some other similar pulling variation as long as this day is hard.
One of the best ways to unlock more pull-up reps, especially for those who are more intermediate or advanced, are weighted pull-ups. When you've been consistently training with added weight, bodyweight starts to feel much lighter. The lighter an exercise is compared to your max, the more reps you can do!
Weighted training also offers the benefit of being very straightforward to program. Slowly and steadily increasing the weight is a simple and sustainable way to build incredible pull-up strength. When you eventually become strong enough, you can use power-lifting style percentage programming.
Advanced and Intermediate athletes should focus on making bodyweight pull-ups easier compared to your normal training. Adding weight can help you to increase the intensity of your pulling workouts, and force adaptation. If you don't have the option to add weight, you could try L-sit pull-ups, wide pull-ups, or many number of other harder-than-standard variations.
Beginners should make their focus on getting as many reps under their belt as possible. Building up comfort and confidence in this movement will prepare you to move up to more difficult movements in the future. The best way to do more pull-ups, is to do more pull-ups.
It takes time and consistency to build up your pulling strength. Accumulating volume will help you to build strength over time, and avoiding failure will prevent you from getting over-fatigued and burning out. Pull-ups aren't an easy exercise. It can take many weeks for you to notice significant improvements, but as long as you stay dedicated, improvement will come with time.
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