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I’m still haunted by my 6th grade gym class. At the beginning of the semester, all the students took part in a physical fitness test. Part of the test included a visit to the old chin-up bar. I remember standing in line nervously knowing I was about to embarrass myself. You see, I was a fat kid. My mom tried to tell me I was big boned (God bless you, mom), but I knew I was fat. And looking at that bar, I knew there was no way I was going to be able to pull up my pudgy 160 pound body with my wimpy 11 year old arms.
I watched all the skinny kids bust out pull-ups like they were nothing. “Yeah,” I thought, “Pull-ups are easy when you only weigh 75 lbs.” Maybe God was trying to humble me that day because the person right in front of me in line was a girl. Not only that, she was a prepubescent athletic machine. I stood and watched her crank out pull-up after pull-up. I lost count of how many she did.
“Okay, McKay,” the coach said, “you’re up.”
I summoned all the positive thinking I could at that moment. I convinced myself that I could actually bust out 4 or 5 pull-ups. With my newfound confidence, I jumped and grabbed the bar. It was over before it even started. I put up a good fight, but gravity and my fat middle school body beat me that day. I couldn’t even do one stinking pull-up.
Ever since then, I’ve made it a goal in life to be able to do pull-ups. Lots of them. To me, the pull-up represents the ultimate test in fitness.
The benefits of pull-ups
The pull-up is a strength building dynamo. In just one pull-up, your body calls upon the following muscles:
- Fingers
- Forearms
- Biceps
- Triceps
- Shoulders
- Back
- Core
Not only will your strength in these muscles increase dramatically from pull-ups, but your upper body will become bigger and more defined. Moreover, the strength you derive from doing pull-ups will help you improve your performance in other exercises like the bench press or overhead press.
How not to do pull-ups
Many men who have trouble doing pull-ups go to the assisted pull-up machine to help them crank the pull-ups out. Don’t do it; it’s a useless crutch. If your goal is to do several unassisted pull-ups, you’re wasting your time with these machines for a couple of reasons.
First, a mental factor exists when doing pull-ups. Because you know the machine is helping you up, you probably won’t exert as much effort as you would if doing pull-ups unassisted. When you finally make the switch to unassisted pull-ups, you may still find yourself unable to do any.
Second, you don’t use all the muscles needed for real pull-ups when using the machine. When doing real pull-ups, your body has to call upon larger and smaller muscle groups all throughout your body for you to pull yourself up. A machine won’t recruit as many of these muscles. Thus, when you make the switch to doing unassisted pull-ups, you won’t have the strength needed to complete them.
The Do More Than One Stinking Pull-up Routine
A friend recommended this pull-up routine to help turn me into a pull-up machine. And guess what? It worked. In a month, I went from doing one stinking pull-up to cranking out 10 reps in multiple sets.
So if you’re ready to start cranking out pull-ups, here’s your routine.
If you currently can only do one pull-up, start out by doing 12 sets of 1 pull-up with a 45 second break between sets two times a week. Once you can do two pull-ups, begin this routine:
Week 1: 6 sets of 2 reps. 45 second break in between sets. Twice a week.
Week 2: 5 sets of 3 reps. Twice a week.
Week 3: 4 Sets of 4 reps. Twice a week.
Week 4: 3 Sets of 6 reps. Twice a week. If you’re able to do more, go ahead. Like I said, by this time I was able to increase my reps to 10.
When you get to the point that you’re able to do more than 12, it’s time to start adding weight to your pull-up routine, like the bad ass guy in the pic.
Where to Do Pull-ups
Many men don’t do pull-ups because they don’t have access to a pull-up bar. Here are some options:
- Tree limb. Some trees have limbs that are perfect for pull-ups. When you’re out for a run, jump up grab on, and start cranking some out.
- Outdoor gyms. During the 1980s, many parks installed outdoor gyms along jogging trails. The idea was that you could get a complete strength workout while jogging. Usually a pull-up bar is one of the stations.
- Get a pull-up bar for your house. The last, and most convenient option, is to get a pull-up bar for your door frame. I recently bought the Iron Gym Pull-up bar and have been completely happy with it. It just fits right in your door frame and you don’t have to drill holes or do any installation. What’s great about having a pull-up bar in your door frame is that every time you walk by it you can crank a few out. After doing this a couple of weeks, you’ll be doing more than one stinking pull-up.
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Work out prep for the Marine Corps PFT:
1 pullup
2 pushups
3 situps
2 pullups
4 pushups
6 situps
…increase by 1 pullup, 2 pushups and 3 situps every set.
keep going up until you can’t do all the pullups. at that point start going back down.
In other words if you max out at 4 pullups, then do your 8 pushups and 12 situps
then do 3 pullups, 6 pushups, 9 situps, then 2 pullups 4 pushups, 6 situps, etc back down to 1 pullup, etc.
Do this every other day and each week try to get one pullup higher and work back down. If you can’t don’t, just try to get as high in the pyramid as you can every time.
By the time you make it to 6 pullups and back down you’ll have done 36 pullups, 72 pushups and 108 situps (probably take around half an hour). Tones your whole body, builds functional strength and no need for equipment.
This isa helpful post. I can’t do even one. I just started using a door bar at home, I step up on a chair then lower myself down slowly. I do sets of 8. I got the idea from here – http://ezinearticles.com/?Coach,-I-Cant-Do-Pull-Ups—What-Now?&id=1641529
Once I can do one then its time for the plan you suggest.
Pull-ups are probably the easiest ways of exercising the upper body. Wish there was something as easy for legs training.
I think pull ups are great, intuitive, timesaving all round workout, quick to do and very functional (if you want to lift your body on a level, on a slope on a tree etc…), not “the hardest exercise known to man”, but maybe just the hardest known to…every men, the hardest among the common exercises (apart rope climbing). Anyway it much depends on the bodyweight,
Handstand pushups are not that commonly known and not even that useful in real life situations I mean (unless you want to climb up stairs on your hands…).
For lower body training, if you are looking for an easy way of exercising like pullups is for upper body, without using weights/equipments, something you can do almost everywhere, I am doing one leg squats carrying on to calves exstensions, if you can’t do them all the way down, do partials or help yourself up for the lower part of the motion by pushing with the other leg or with arms pulling on a bar or pushing down your legs. Instead, if they are too easy make them deeper putting the foot on a raised surface while your body goes lower and/or adding weight on you or just pushing/pulling upwards an immobile object while flexing
ok im pretty overweight and im not very strong in my back will hanging on the bar help me at all or do i need to do other back workouts
I’m only fifteen and I got started doing pull ups a few months ago and they are my favorite excersise and I like to work out. They really seem to help almost all of your major upper body muscles like lats, biceps,shoulders and your whole back. I have the iron gym and you can also work out your chest and triceps by doing push ups and dips with it. Right now I do four sets of ten pull ups and if you can’t do pull ups yet you can get the iron gym and just use it for push ups and dips until you are strong enough and then do pull ups because they use some of the same muscles(push ups are very good for your triceps as well as chest but also shoulders and back which you need for pull ups and for your biceps just start out with concentration curls, barbell and dumbell curls, and preacher curls, even if you can’t use a lot of weight focus on form that is the most important thing because I could curl a ton of weight with bad form but it won’t help me at all). Hope that helpedand remener you can’t excersise some of your body and not the rest so do leg excersises and deadlifts, power squats are one of the best excersises out there and never neglect to run, hop on the bench but you should never be able to bench press more than you deadlift. Form is key.
gr8 man……dese tips work buddy……bt deadlifts r more diffficult 2 b done……
griffin on January 24th, 2009 5:15 am “Pull-ups are probably the easiest ways of exercising the upper body. Wish there was something as easy for legs training.”
They’re called squats genius!
Oh and by the way if your excuse is I don’t have time or money the iron gym costs about 25 to 30 bucks and takes about 4 minutes to set up and if you do for sets of pull ups with a 2minute break in between that will probably only take about 10 to 15 minutes so what if you’ve never worked out you have to start somewhere and the sooner you start the sooner you see results
Thank you for the post.
I am 53, about 10 lbs over weight. I attempt to do pull ups 3 -4 times a week. Sometimes interspersed with push ups, sometimes with chin ups. I can do about 6-7 and then need to stop. Some sessions I go till about 40 or 45 , however I can get there.
I had never worked out, until about 2 1/2 years ago. I never did a pull up in my life (maybe the many years ago fitness test, but thats lost…)
I absolutely agree with you, for upper body strength, pull ups are amazing.
I would love to be able to balst out a set of ten. Should I focus singularly on pull ups, or continue with chins as well ?
Thank you.
I couldn’t do a single pull-up when at school; i, too, know how embarrassing it can be. Then, in the army (Russian army) i could hardly do 3 half pull-ups. God forbid Dips!!!!! Not even a single one. Now i’m 33 years old: 20 pull-ups (palms away, of course!), 25 dips, and i’m gonna add some weight, cause it’s TOO easy. What i wanna say, don’t give up, guys, even weakest man with enough determination can move mountains!!!
That’s a great programme for getting the pull-up strength up. That programme doesn’t take too long either. In hindsight I should have taken that route rather than starting up with low reps and wearing a weight vest. The aim was to do 7 pull-ups from a dead hang (at the end of a whole load of other stuff that darn near killed me) so I started out with resistance.
Maybe should have worked on it this way.
well i dont know what about you but i was suffering from obisety through all of my life…
i am 15 now , i am 6 feet tall 230lbs i am obese and i can easily do 6-7 pull ups…
maybe i am just extreamly strong but anyway i belive there is no connection between your weight and your ability to do pull ups because since i began pumping iron i had no problem doing pull ups or any other things like benching 220+ leg pressing 660lbs and other stuff….
About 10 weeks ago I hired a personal trainer to help me in a full body program. One of the first evaluation things she had me do was a pull up. I managed 3 rest, 2, rest and then a half one, so a grand total of 5.5. I slowly increased my reps by setting a goal and then beating it, I would try for 3 sets of 3 but on the last set try for 4. Once I could do 4 on my last set, I would start off my next time with 4/4/fail. Now if fail was 5 then my next workout would start with 5/5/fail…..you get the idea. The other day she said show me what you got, and I pulled off 12/12/12.5!! Now your article I realize that I had been doing them incorrectly with a palm facing grip. Since I can do many that way I switched my grip to palm away and did 3 sets of 7. Now to work up in the same fashion as my others.
Try doing static holds – if you can pull up once, hold at the contracted position as long as you can. Do that two or three times a week, then see if you can do more than one full range pull up.
Another technique is doing the pull up (or any other exercise) in a style called ‘J-reps’, where you start at the weakest part of your movement and do short range reps through the entire movement. You can find info on that on the web that will explain it better than I can here, but believe me, it will show you what you’re made of ..
ANOTHER GOOD STRATEGY; SET UP PULL UP BAR IN A NEUTRAL DOORWAY MAYBE DOWN TO THE BASEMENT, GARAGE, BACKYARD, IN MY CASE ITS TO MY OWN BATHROOM AND DO ONE PULLUP EVERYTIME YOU PASS THRU THAT DOORWAY, COMING AND GOING… YOU’LL BE DOING THE BOY SCOUT MINIMUM IN NO TIME!
I’m a runner and started doing pull ups about a year ago. The first day I could barely do five. I’m now up to 400 pull ups per week, typically three to four sets of 20 reps. I’ve also started weighted pull ups. I’m 57 years old… so if I can do it, anyone can. I have to say that I’ve worked really hard at it… nearly every day I feel I’m almost maxing out..
I recently bought a rock climbing fingerboard/hangboard and put it up on the floor joists in my basement. I didn’t have any place I could do pullups. I’m only up to two so far – I just started this work out – but the hangboard totally works for doing pullups on. The bonus is that hanging on it gives me a stronger grip and bigger forearms too. The board was like thirty bucks, in case anyone else has a house like mine with no place to put a pull up bar.
I see guys every day at the gym doing fake pull-ups. They might go 1/4 of the way and they are pretty smug.
I’d say go with the lat pulldown machine until the strength goes up and then move on to real chip-ups: wide, standard, close, and inverse grips.
One thing that’s really awesome is to have a chin-up bar in your home. You can crank a few out every time you go by it; it adds up!!!
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I’m so happy you were a fat kid, too.
Definitely going to add this to my goals for the winter. I can’t do a single one.
Here is a really good program I have been following http://twentypullups.com
There is very little muscle in your fingers. Fingers are moved by the pulling of long tendons. The tendons are connected to muscle in your palm and forearm.
Ryan on Feb 20th – hanging from the bar will help your grip, but won’t do much for the rest of you. If you’re failing because of your grip then that’ll help, but what’ll help more is hanging with bent arms – as bent as you can, for as long as you can. As you continue with that, you’ll find that the strength you build will help the rest of the pull up.
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