Hi
i need some advice as how to improve my pull ups..
at present i can do unassisted 5,5,4,3 then i am finished.
There is a machine in the gym which helps you..should i start using that ? and is once a week sufficient to notice improvement?
ideally i would like to build up to 12 unassisted any idea how long that would take?


thanks

I absolutely love pullups. To me they are one of the single greatest exercises and tests of fitness.

In short, no, there is no machine that can help you. You will only get significantly better at doing pullups by doing more of them. Like anything else, you really just have to continue to push yourself, continue to struggle for the next repetition. If your grip is failing you, then the pullups are working your grip strength and that is the best thing you can do. Biceps, lats, etc. - same.

If you can already do 5 unassisted, completely full-range-of-motion pullups, then that really isn't bad. Most people can't do any (they think they can, but they are only fooling themselves by shortening the range of motion).

You should probably train them more than once a week. Don't use soreness as an indicator. If you feel like you have the energy to do a pullup workout, do it. Try this... perform 30 pullups for time. Just go to the gym and stand there at the pullup bar doing pullups until you complete 30 reps. Keep a stopwatch going and try to beat your best time with every workout. That's hard to beat in terms of simplicity, and I guarantee you get better at pullups with it.

How long will it take? Possibly a long time. Check out this... http://people.bu.edu/timwalsh/pullups.txt

You can see that I did 5 repetitions for the first time in January of 2004, and I couldn't do 12 until May of 2005. My bodyweight stayed fairly constant the whole time. If you lose some fat, obviously that will help. I probably could have done it faster if I knew everything that I know now.

Enjoy the journey and celebrate every new pullup.

Tim

Men's Health article on mastering the pullup. (http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=fitness&category=muscle.building&conitem=15625fb666e69010VgnVCM100000cfe793cd____&page=1) <-- Read this.

At 5'8", 170 lbs, training pullups 3x/week, and already able to knock out 5 I'd say you could do 12 unassisted within 5 weeks.

Since you can do at least one unassisted pullup, I would stay away from the gravitron/pullup assist machine. Those work the muscles but do little to benefit the coordination/central nervous system firing pattern you need to get free pullups in.

I dont really like the pull up machine that you're talking about...the one with the platform under your feet I assume. Yeah...just keep doing them

At 5'8", 170 lbs, training pullups 3x/week, and already able to knock out 5 I'd say you could do 12 unassisted within 5 weeks.

Based on my own experience, I strongly disagree. Again, if you are doing REAL pullups (dead hang at the bottom, touching your chest at the top), expect your progress to be closer to one more pullup each month. Not one each week.

Going from 5 to 12 pullups at 170 pounds is the equivalent of adding 40 pounds of max pulling strength when you are already beyond the days of easy beginner gains. It's been a long time since I've been able to consistently add 8-10 pounds per week to any of my lifts.

Tim

Based on my own experience, I strongly disagree.

Be my guest. I'll stick by it. My estimate is based on my experience as well and I actually added a week on my initial prediction.

5 weeks, user786.

What was the experience that you are drawing upon?

I'm not trying to challenge you. I am just curious so that I can add it to my own data. What was your starting weight and number of reps, and how did they progress?

Tim

Try kipping pullups.

What was the experience that you are drawing upon?

A weekend fitness class at the Naval Academy that was run by the former boxing instructor there. It was an 8-week class, we'd only meet on Saturdays for 3 hours. He'd kick our asses around the grounds 'til somebody puked then would ease up a bit.

All guys. Ages from 16-45. Fitness ranges from pretty overweight to 'bout 10% bodyfat. Mile times from 12:00 to 5:30.

Did the course three times. At the start, most of the guys were able to do 1-4 pullups in a row. By week 8, the slackest was cranking out about a dozen and most were doing 20 in a row unassisted for the first set.

There used to be (gated off since 9/11) a row of chinup bars the length of one athletic field. I think there were 32 of them but don't remember now...maybe 28. We'd start at one and work our way down the line, cycling through five different grips. You had to do ten chins on each bar. If you were failing, the guy behind you grabbed your ankles and helped. Didn't matter how long it took.

My arms were always dead by the fifth or sixth bar so I started working chins at home to get better at them. I don't know what my max was 'cause I never went past 20 in a row...there were always more to do than you were able to.

So my experience has been that if you can get the first unassisted pullup in, it becomes an endurance effort.

user786 should be able to go from 5-12 in four weeks. I'm adding an extra week 'cause he doesn't have a pissed off instructor screaming at him to get the fuck over the bar. :lol:

Chinups are a fair bit easier than pullups so is it not better to build with them at first and then move onto pullups ?


I think the script with chinups is with the underhand grip you can bring the biceps into play much more so it makes it easier than the overhand grip pullup. Chinups are also supposedly a very good bicep worker to the extent that some say they're the best bicep worker and if you do them you won't need to do curls. Then there are those who say you must do curls to get big biceps. Just the usual conflicting information you get in the weight training world I guess!

Chinups are a fair bit easier than pullups so is it not better to build with them at first and then move onto pullups ?


I think the script with chinups is with the underhand grip you can bring the biceps into play much more so it makes it easier than the overhand grip pullup. Chinups are also supposedly a very good bicep worker to the extent that some say they're the best bicep worker and if you do them you won't need to do curls. Then there are those who say you must do curls to get big biceps. Just the usual conflicting information you get in the weight training world I guess!

This isn't a bad idea either. Keep switching up your grip. Do some overhand, some underhand, some wide-grip, some close-grip. Some people swear by this kind of variety.

As far as the comment about biceps, I like to believe that the guy who can do 20 legitimate dead hang pullups will have proportional biceps. And if the biceps are the first muscle to fail you on the pullups, then the pullups are working your biceps adequately for size/strength gains.

Tim

My arms were always dead by the fifth or sixth bar so I started working chins at home to get better at them. I don't know what my max was 'cause I never went past 20 in a row...there were always more to do than you were able to.

So what was your starting bodyweight and number of repetitions, and did your bodyweight change by the time you could do 20+ at the end of 8 weeks?

I just want to calculate what your total strength increase was.

Tim

Well, I am 5'8" and 170 pounds, so I'm pretty much an exact match of the original poster. I've been lifting for several years, and consider myself fairly strong for my size. A few months ago, though, I realized a lot of my strength was push strength and that I hadn't been doing any pullups. So, I tested myself on full hang, full motion pullups and managed a pitiful 3 (or 8 cheat!)

To make a long story short, I've been doing them once a week since October 21, and I managed to hit 10 for the first time today.

I think a lot of that has to do with my muscles learning the movement. Though I've been lifting for awhile, my muscles had to get the muscle memory and strength for this. So, I think I got some newbie gains.

All while this was going on, I'm lucky if I added 10 pounds to my bench, or 10 pounds to my pushpress, or 15 to my deadlift in that almost 3 month period.

So, I think pullups are one of those things that can be trained fairly quickly if you have the desire and a decent base of strength.

Good luck!

So what was your starting bodyweight and number of repetitions, and did your bodyweight change by the time you could do 20+ at the end of 8 weeks?

Dunno what the starting or ending bodyweight was. Likely between 172 - 175 lbs. I don't think I lost any weight while doing that training. I think I managed to get 8 reps out at the start.

I'm 6'3".

I was 26 years old at the time described above.

I'm a Virgo.

I managed 5 full-extension chins in the starting set in November 2007 @ 197 lbs.

I did 11 on the first set this past Tuesday @ 204.5 lbs.

I like to work chins multiple times a week at times, too. When I do this, I alternate weighted chins with repetition work.

I can't do a gazillion chins, I think my max has been about 14-15. However, I did 3 @ BW (190) + 90 lbs the other day.

So do them often and mix things up. Weight, grip, rest intervals, etc. Don't just do them once a week if you really want to add reps fast.

I like to work chins multiple times a week at times, too. When I do this, I alternate weighted chins with repetition work.

I can't do a gazillion chins, I think my max has been about 14-15. However, I did 3 @ BW (190) + 90 lbs the other day.

So do them often and mix things up. Weight, grip, rest intervals, etc. Don't just do them once a week if you really want to add reps fast.

Nice work. That is brutally strong.

I too have had some success working very heavy singles, doubles and triples to increase my max strength and then doing max sets with just bodyweight. When I hit my own personal best of 16 reps, that's how I was training.

When I couldn't do any pullups at all I worked up to one by doing negative repetitions. Years later I decided to employ the negatives again wearing a 60 pound backpack. I gained some strength quickly (mostly CNS adaption, I'd say) but it was VERY hard on my hands. The pinching on the pads of my fingers was unbearable.

Tim

I'm doing chins twice a week at the moment. I can do 8 for the first set from a dead hang. I can't keep that up for the following sets though sadly. I like to do them from a dead hang to get the full range of movement. You see a lot of guys who only go down kind of half way but that's not the same.

If I could get that up to 20 in a couple of months that would be great. Am cutting at the moment too and when you get lighter they defo get easier as the strength to wait ratio increases. At 13ish stone I could do 2 or 3, at 11ish stone can now do 8.


My biceps are still puny though - only just over 13 inches, feck a month or so ago they were 14 inches but the shrinkage is just fat loss I think as strength isn't down. I'm doing a biceps isolation of 6 sets of curls once a week now though so hopefully that will make the fuckers grow. Although I have read that chins are actually the best biceps exercise so who knows, gonnae try arm curls one day a week anyway and see how it goes.

Thanks All ,for the advice and links. :tu: ill keep mixing different types and practicing and see how i go