The Keys To Mastering Pull Ups
Pull ups and chin ups are just one of those exercises. No matter how hard you work at them they never seem to get easy. And that is ok. It is a hard exercise that takes a lot of work to master. Most aren’t willing to put in the time and effort it takes to master them. They either just expect they will get better the more they try or just compensate and throw form out the window.
If you are willing to devote some time and energy into it, you can definitely see massive gains in your pull and chin ups. Continue reading if that sounds like you and be ready to get to work and apply these strategies.
There are two main factors to consider when trying to improve your pull ups. You must focus on both Muscular Strength and Muscular Endurance. These two don’t typically improve together unless you are specifically training that way. The pull up seems to be a unique exercise that really requires both attributes to be successful.
You have different types of muscle fibers and motor units that control joints. You probably have heard of fast twitch and slow twitch. These muscle fibers are part of motor units which involves the nerves and all the muscle fibers that work together. We have both high and low threshold motor units. They work just like you would think.
If you are lifting something pretty light or easy for you, the body will only recruit muscle fibers it needs to perform that action. This would be through the low threshold motor units. These work typically when less effort is required or over longer periods of time.
On the other hand sometimes you need to lift something heavier or faster. When this occurs the effort of the low threshold motor units isn’t enough so it much recruit the high threshold fibers. These are only recruits under higher demand. So if you never lift heavy or never lift fast you won’t train these fibers effectively.
This works the other way as well. If you only lift heavy and never train for more repetitions you will not recruit your lower threshold fibers effeciently.
Some athletes needs more of one or the other so they will spend most of their time training those areas. But getting back to pull ups you are going to need both. You need the strength but to do multiple reps you will need endurance as well.
So let’s focus on strength first. You have to be strong enough to do a pull up. This would be getting 1-4 reps. You will typically use more higher threshold fibers to achieve this. So you must focus on building strength effectively. You can add external load like vests to build more strength. Or if you are looking to achieve your first pull up you focus on building strength with body weight.
Here is a video showing how you can work this initially strength to get your first couple pull ups. This does take time so be patient.
Ok so this is a great starting point. If you are already able to do at least 4 pull ups, like I said, you will now need to add load to challenge these fibers more and get stronger.
Now the flip side that many forget. If you are looking to really improve pull ups and get more and more reps, we now have to combine endurance work. The hard part is, because pull ups are so hard, it makes it very difficult to perform more repetitions.
This is where assisted pull ups come in to play. You need to lighten the load (your body weight) in order to be able to do more reps. Since you probably aren’t going to drop enough weight fast enough to make this work, you will need to find alternatives.
Here are a few of my favorite ways to work on endurance. The goal will be to hit higher reps like 10 or more. Try some of these out.
Band Assisted Pull Ups – Click here to pick up bands
TRX Pull Ups
Jumping Pull Ups
This should give you a few ideas on how you can more effectively train your pull ups. I would recommend making this a priority over the next 4-6 weeks. Don’t overdo it but try and focus on once a week performing more strength based training and then once a week focusing on endurance training for your pull ups.
This should get you mastering your pull ups rather quickly.
Mike Deibler MS, CSCS, SGX
OCR Underground
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