Over time I have discovered something very interesting about moi. I tend to repeat myself. A lot. So why end the streak?
Today our topic AGAIN is the pull up. On this here blog, I would like to outline the steps you need to be able to get your very first pull up. Yes, I said "you." (We truly are a secret little club. Let's support each other.) The pull up is the foundation of all exercises. In fact, I have yet to meet a single really fit guy who can't do at least one pull up with perfect form. Time to stop procrastinating and get the job done.
Getting stronger at pulling means, in the first place, developing a strong grip. This is called the dead hang. All you need to do is find something to hang from, get a really firm grip on it, then just relax into the hang. Let's see if I can find someone in the gym to demonstrate what I'm talking about. Oh, here's someone.
At first you're only going to be holding for a couple of seconds, and that's perfectly okay. Eventually, as your grip gets better, you'll be able to hold yourself for longer, ideally for 30 seconds.
The next step is called the active hang.
Notice our model is now actively engaging his back by bringing his shoulder blades down and back. This is called scapular depression. Whereas the dead hang works your grip, the active hang starts to strengthen your back muscles. Try holding these for around 30 seconds as well..
Step 3 is called the scapular shrug.
Just like with the active hang, you're engaging your scapula, but now you're doing it for reps. You want these to be as slow and controlled as possible. This will give you the greatest bang for the buck with this exercise. When you can do 8-10 reps of these, you're ready to move on to step 4, which is the negative pull up.
Here you simply jump up to the top of the bar and gradually lower yourself back down, making sure to keep your scapula fully engaged.
Finally, you're ready to try the band-assisted pull up, which can be done with various sizes of bands.
I firmly believe that if you do all of these exercises with enough frequency and diligence, you will be a pull up master in no time.
Note: Please forgive our model for his poor form on some of the demonstrations. He had just finished his workout today and was a bit tired when I took these videos.
😕