Pull Ups Anyone?

We called it the  ‘Canuck Vs Oz Throwdown’ when my biz partner from Australian visited Canada.

It sounds adversarial, but really, the weather seemed to be the worst enemy for my publishing partner and good friend, Lisa Bullock.

It was a long time coming, but Lisa finally made her way to Canada from Australia and Calgary’s weather did it’s best to chew her up and spit her out. It was absolutely horrible.

She combated it with a smile and was actually thrilled to see snow. She questioned the beautiful ‘blossoms’ on the trees, but I had to burst her bubble telling her that the blossoms were actually icicles 😉

Here was our finisher for a fantastic back workout:

• 10 pull ups (assisted or inverted rows)
• 10 push ups

• 9 pull ups (assisted or inverted rows)
• 9 push ups

This was a ‘ripper’ as Lisa would say.

Need to work on your pull ups? I sometimes forget to tell you about one of my first Challenge Workout programs called Pull Up Challenge where you can discover how to do your first pull up or add ten more to your personal best.

Here are a few tips to help you maximize your pull up if you’re a TOTAL beginner:

Tip #1 – To lead up to an assisted pull up, just grab a bar and hang. You’ll be surprised at the stretch that you’ll get through the back and even the abdominals. Ensure that you can easily touch the ground without too much effort. Do this hang for up to 30 seconds and it will stretch and lengthen those muscles of the back, and it will also improve your grip strength.

Tip#2 – As you hang, think about inwardly rotating your scapula, or squeezing your shoulder blades together. You should start to feel a slight elevation of your body, even if you can’t move your entire body up to the bar.

This is called scapular retraction. Follow this with arching the back, looking upwards and slightly bending the arms, see if you can lift the body slightly. Your body cannot be too vertical. Imagine bringing your breast bone up to the bar. This isn’t possible if you’re hanging completely perpendicular.

Tip #3 – The most effective way to improve the pull up is to perform ‘negative’ reps. This means that you can assist yourself on the concentric portion of the movement, or the ‘pull up’ part, but then during the eccentric or lowering portion of the movement, you will take your full body weight and lower to a count of four seconds. If you can’t lift ANY of your own body weight, make this a FULLY assisted pull up by stepping up to the bar from a chair and then take your full body weight on the descent.

Just for fun, here are a few of my favorite pull up workouts:

Workout #1

Warm up – Full body warm up including jump rope, modified push ups, wall stick ups, scapular retractions from the bar (about 3-5 min)

Do 5 total rounds:

• 1 minute of jump rope
• 8-10 pull ups (assisted if necessary)
• 8-10 heavy DB, BB or cable rows (last rep should be hard!)
• 10 cable or DB pull overs
• plank recovery (30 seconds)
• Rest as needed

 

Workout #2 – This one uses traditional gym equipment.

Warm up – Full body warm up including jump rope, modified push ups, wall stick ups, scapular retractions from the bar (about 3-5 min)

• 1a – 8 Pull up negatives (6 second decent, feel free to use an assist on the way up to the bar)
• 1b – 10 Lat pull downs

Repeat for 3 total sets

• 2a – 8-10 cable rows
• 2b – 10 burpees

Repeat for 3 total sets

• 3a – 10 Single arm DB rows per side
• 3b – 10 hanging leg raise variation

Repeat for 3 total sets

 

Workout #3 – This one is tough!

Warm up – Full body warm up including jump rope, modified push ups, wall stick ups, scapular retractions from the bar (about 3-5 min)

• 1a – 10 burpee pull ups (do an assisted pull up like a jump pull up, if that’s not possible, so this in a tri-set with the burpees first, assisted pull ups second)
• 1b – 10 per leg spider crawls

Repeat for two total sets

• 2a – 8-10 heavy BB deadlifts
• 2b – 8-10 hanging leg raises

Repeat for three total sets

• 3a – 10 Single arm DB rows per side
• 3b – jump rope 1 min

Repeat for 3 total sets

Get more tips and workouts guaranteed to improve your pull up HERE.