Pull-ups, also called chin-ups, are an excellent exercise for developing strength in your arms and upper back. When this exercise is performed correctly, the primary muscle group involved is the latissumus dorsi, or lats, but you will also use your biceps, rear deltoids and many other small accessory muscles. Many people struggle to do pull-ups and wish they were able to do more. Your strength- to-weight ratio is a key factor in successfully performing pull-ups and increasing the number of pull-ups you can do.
Instructions
Step 1
Grab a chair and place it below the pull-up bar, about one foot behind where your legs would naturally hang. This chair can be used to not only help you get up onto the bar, if you cannot reach it, but also for doing assisted pull-ups.
Step 2
Place the tops of your feet on the front of the chair. This will include the toes and upper halves of the feet. Your legs should be bent at the knee and your arms straight as you hang from the bar.
Step 3
Press upward with the top half of your feet as you attempt to pull yourself up to the pull-up bar. Using your feet to assist you will make it possible to do multiple sets. Make sure that you are using your back and arms to do as much of the work as possible. Your feet and legs should only be giving you a little extra help to reach the bar.
Step 4
Rest only after you have completed as many pull-ups as you can. When you get to the point where you cannot even get more than half way up, using mostly back and arms, then you should stop and rest. Do not just switch so that you are doing more repetitions but using your legs for most of the effort. This exercise is about strengthening and utilizing the muscles in your back and arms, not those in your legs.
Step 5
Switch from chair-assisted pull-ups to negatives. A negative is a strength exercise that only uses the eccentric part of a muscular contraction. This is the phase of lifting when your muscle is not overcoming the effort, but is being used to control the resistance, and the muscle is actually lengthening while contracting. When you sit down to a chair, your quadricep muscles are contracting, but they are not being used to stand up. This is an eccentric contraction as your quadriceps are being used to control your body as you slowly sit back to the chair; although the muscles are contracting, they are also lengthening.
Step 6
Use the chair to get yourself into the top position, where your chin is level with the bar and your arms are fully bent. Remove your feet from the chair and slowly drop to the hanging position. This is the negative, or eccentric phase, of the contraction and you should try to drop as slowly as you possibly can. Once you are at the bottom, use the chair to go back to the starting position and repeat. Do as many as 10 negatives and then rest.
Step 7
Add supplemental exercises to your routine. Other exercises that work your lats, biceps, shoulders and chest muscles will provide you with more strength to perform pull-ups. Focus on mainly using free weights since pull-ups are done with multiple accessory muscles that are more likely to be used with free weight exercises.
Step 8
Challenge yourself at all times. No matter how weak you feel, or how few pull-ups you can do, always push to do one or two more on your next workout. You may even find that you feel like giving up if you cannot do a full repetition, but you should never do this. If you can only lift yourself up half way on the last repetition, then do it. Remember that if you started doing only two pull-ups and you can now do three, it means you have improved by 50 percent. Use positive thinking to keep motivated and never give up.
Things You'll Need
- Pull-up bar
- Chair
- Gloves (optional)
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