I was recently at a ‘mastermind’ meeting in Vegas with the world’s top fitness pro’s.
Seriously, I say ‘the world’s TOP’ pro’s only cuz I mean it. Where else will you find THE world’s leading doctor on gluten, THE exercise for injury expert, THE intermittent fasting expert, THE Final Phase Fat Loss expert, THE workout finisher expert, THE sugar cravings expert, and of course the one and only Turbulence Training king, Craig Ballantyne (among others, too many to mention).
Trust me when I say it’s a cream of the crop crowd and I’m thrilled to be part of this group.
My new pal, Liz DiAlto and I hit the gym because she wanted some tips on how to get from zero to 10 pull ups quickly. You’ll see in the video that there are lots of tidbits for you to apply to your pull up endeavors.
We wanted to provide you with a ton of great content (stay tuned, more is on the way)…
By the way, after this video, we were kicked out of the gym…can you believe it? Apparently we needed someone’s approval so Roman (John Romaniello) and Big Mike Whitfield tried to charm their way into getting permission while Liz and I taped this video below on the sly. Seems they were a little short on the charm on that day since we were sent packing, (yes, hard to believe if you know those two awesome dudes, the manager must have a heart of stone…)
To summarize my tips, here they are in point form:
1. No power grip! – Make sure to maintain a loose grip on the bar, even though you’re hanging on for dear life. Loosening your grip will save your elbow joints from any radiating pain. I learned this the hard way by experiencing some elbow pain that I could have avoided had I not done a ‘power grip’ on the bar and switched up my hand grips on occasion.
2. Scapular retraction – That’s a big term for ‘squeeze your shoulder blades together’. Most people try to engage the arms and not the back when doing a pull up. Hang from a bar and draw the shoulder blades down and back as if squeezing a pencil between them. Make sure you keep a ‘long neck’, that is, don’t let those shoulders creep up towards your ears. You should be able to get a little movement up towards the bar without even bending at the elbow with just the movement of retracting the scapula or shoulder blades.
3. Eccentric training – You’ve heard me mention this before if you’ve been on my blog but it’s worth repeating again and again. The strengthening portion of the movement for the pull up is when your body lowers to the full hang position, so anytime you can work this eccentric contraction under control, you’ll increase your strength. Jump pull ups and assisted pull ups can help with this.
If you want more awesome tips and a done for you program, click here and I’ll guide you all the way.