There’s few exercises that show off true strength like a pull-up. And it also tends to be one of the hardest exercises to become good at.
So, in this post I’m going to give you three tips you can use to master your pull-up game.
Pull-Up Negatives
This is where we’re going to start at the top-most position of a pull-up by jumping up to the start position.
From here, you’re going to lower yourself ever so slowly keeping tension the entire time until you’re back to the bottom, then you’ll jump up and do it again.
Now why does this help your regular pull ups?
Because working to strengthen the muscles involved in a pull-up eccentrically will transfer over to your ability to contract those same muscles concentrically and pull your bodyweight up to the bar.
Negatives are great for everybody, but I definitely recommend them for those who can’t already perform bodyweight pull-ups.
Pull-Up Isometric Holds
Isometric strength is the ability to hold and maintain force in a static position.
The way we can apply this to the pull-up is by pulling ourselves to the top of the position and holding that position for 10 seconds.
Then as you get stronger you can start to hold for 20, 30, 40 seconds and so on.
What are we doing here? We’re taking the muscles involved in vertical pulling and introducing a great deal of time under tension.
Increased time under tension is a factor when it comes to building muscle. So if we can work in isometrics to build up our lats, our shoulders and our core in this plane of motion, we can build up those areas to greatly improve our pull-ups.
Accessory Exercises
If we know the muscles that are going to be used in a pull-up, we can work in accessory exercises in our training to target those specific areas and build them up.
For example, we know the biggest mover in a pull-up is the lats. So we can target this area by performing exercises like lat pulldowns.
Lat pulldowns may be the best accessory exercise for pull-ups simply because it very closely mimics the motion of a pull-up, and will allow you to build up the strength and size of your lats.
Want to watch our full-length video on this subject? Click here
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