If you’re ready to build strength and a toned upper body, the pull up is perfect. Pull-ups are performed by lifting your body up to a bar and lowering yourself back down. This bodyweight exercise is not the simplest exercises to perform, but it has major benefits.
By learning and performing pull-ups correctly, it will assist you with completing multi-joint, or compound exercises. This is because these require you to use more than one muscle group and more than one joint. The exercises require a maximal amount of muscle fibres and they can help you gain mass efficiently.
Building strength and form with pull-ups can make weight training exercises including pull-downs, rows and curls. By regularly practising the execution of pull-ups, it will assist you with performing these exercises with ease.
This programme is designed for hypertrophy: Unadulterated muscle growth. Secondly, this can be incorporated into your already designed workout.
The Neutral Grip:
Palms face each other, as used when you do pull-ups with a V-bar attachment or parallel chinning bars. This will place more emphasis on the brachialis. This is an underlying muscle that pushes the biceps up and increases your upper arm.
If your brachialis has been neglected, introducing pull-ups will result in size increases, even up to an inch in upper arm size.
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The Supinated Grip:
Palms facing you will overload the elbow flexors and incorporates more muscles, compared to the wide-grip pull-up, plus it maximises a cross-sectional area of the muscle. As a bonus, grip strength is correlated with arm size. Now you have an inch of new upper-arm muscle mass just waiting to be built.
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The Programme:
Phase 1:
Time: Four Weeks. Method: Volume.
Every day you’re going to do several sets of pull-ups. Never go to failure on any set and separate each set by an hour or more.
For example:
- Perform some pull-ups after breakfast.
- A set before you train.
- Some after you train.
- A set in the afternoon or evening, etc.
Use anything that can utilise or replicate a bar. You’re going to accumulate hundreds of extra pull-ups over a 4-week period. Some days you’ll achieve 10 or 20 and other days you’ll reach 40 or 50. Each week aim for more total pulls than the previous week.
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Challenge Day:
Once a week, you’ll need to set a timer for 5 minutes and perform as many pull-ups as you can with good form. Add this number to your weekly total and take the next day off. If you can already do 12 to 15 good pull-ups, then choose 10 as your target number per set.
If you can’t do at least 12 pull-ups, then you will need to practice until you become stronger and then come back to this programme.
Grip Position: First Two Weeks: Neutral or semi-supinated grip (palms facing one another). Last Two Weeks: Supinated (palms toward your face).
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Off Day:
Once a week, the day after Challenge Day, make sure you rest as your body needs to recover, this is so your muscles can grow but importantly, you reduce injury. Here’s an example of what your routine can look like:
Week 1:
- Monday: 10, 10
- Tuesday: 10, 10, 10
- Wednesday: 10
- Thursday: 10, 10, 10
- Friday: 10, 10, 10
- Saturday (Challenge Day): 40 in 5 minutes
- Sunday: Off
TOTAL: 160 reps
Week 2:
- Monday: 10, 10, 10, 10
- Tuesday: 10, 10
- Wednesday: 10, 10, 10
- Thursday: 10, 10, 10
- Friday: 10, 10, 10
- Saturday (Challenge Day): 45 in 5 minutes
- Sunday: Off
TOTAL: 195
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Week 3:
- Monday: 10, 10, 10, 10, 10
- Tuesday: 10, 10, 10
- Wednesday: 10, 10, 10, 10
- Thursday: 10, 10, 10, 10
- Friday: 10, 10, 10, 10
- Saturday (Challenge Day): 50 in 5 minutes
- Sunday: Off
TOTAL: 250
Week 4:
- Monday: 10, 10, 10, 10, 10
- Tuesday: 10, 10, 10, 10
- Wednesday: 10, 10, 10, 10
- Thursday: 10, 10, 10, 10
- Friday: 10, 10, 10, 10, 10
- Saturday (Challenge Day): 52 in 5 minutes
- Sunday: Off
TOTAL: 282