Pull-ups are the "poor cousin" of chin-ups, because they are more difficult to do and often left out of beginner and intermediate workouts. By themselves, pull-ups offer limited bodybuilding, endurance and weight-loss benefit. As part of a complete workout, they add variety and calorie burning to your fitness training.
Technique
You perform pull-ups with your palms facing away from you. They are similar in technique to chin-ups, which are performed with your palms facing you, but use different muscles. To do pull-ups, hang from a bar over your head, with your entire body weight in the air. Depending on the height of the bar, you may have to bend your knees and keep your legs bent behind you as you perform them. Gripping the bar with both hands slightly outside of your shoulders, pull yourself up using your arms. Keep your torso pointed forward -- do not twist side to side to help raise yourself. Put a slight arch in your back as you raise yourself, pulling your chin above the bar. Hold this position for one or two seconds, then slowly lower yourself using only your muscles -- don't let yourself drop -- for maximum muscle-building strength. A variation of these pull-ups has you using two bars to the side of you with your palms facing each other.
Muscle Worked
You work a variety of muscles when your perform pull-ups and chin-ups, but emphasize different muscles with each. Chin-ups are easier to do because they use more of your larger biceps and chest muscles. Pull-ups call on your weaker lats and triceps to do more of the work. If you can't do a pull-up, try chin-ups to build strength. Chin-ups work your lats and triceps to some degree and will help build strength for pull-ups. Trying to do pull-ups also creates isometric muscle contractions and some concentric muscle contractions, so you will get muscle-building benefit from trying to do pull-ups each workout, even if you can't do one.
Cardio Exercise
You can use pull-ups as part of a circuit training workout designed to burn calories. Add sets of chin-ups to a circuit to keep your heart rate high and burning calories. Let yourself drop on the way down to decrease muscle use and delay fatigue so you can keep exercising. Try kipping pull-ups, which bring your knees upward and swing your hips forward to give you momentum, making the pull-up easier. Check with a coach or trainer before you attempt these types of pull-ups to prevent back injury.
Muscular Endurance Exercise
You can improve muscular endurance for sports with pull-ups. Endurance is your ability to perform activity over time. If you are doing a circuit training workout for muscular endurance, add a circuit of pull-ups. Perform the pull-ups slowly if you have enough strength to do a circuit of six or more pull-ups. Perform the pull-ups more quickly and let yourself drop down, as you did for cardio workouts, if you have less strength.
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