How To Do More Pull-Ups? A Few Basics To Get You Started

You may be a big-shot at the gym who can easily perform deadlifts, hold your plank position for more than two minutes, and run for miles without gasping for air, but performing pull-ups might still be a challenging task for you. Pull-ups require immense muscle strength, especially that of the latissimus dorsi.

Pull-ups are challenging because you have to train your upper body and core to lift the weight of your entire body. If you cannot engage your back muscles, you will not be able to perform proper pull-ups. Many people have a common concern, “how to get better at pull ups without equipment?”

Apart from your muscle strength, technique also plays a significant role in determining how many pull-ups you can crack at a time. With proper guidance, you can train your body to function as you want it to. If you are wondering how to get better at pull-ups, this article will give you an idea and prepare you to gradually increase your number of pull-ups. With practice and perseverance, you can definitely up your pull-up game!

How To Do More Pull-Ups?

To perform pull-ups, you will have to hang from a monkey bar or a pull-bar, grip it strongly, and use your arm muscle strength to pull your body up until your chin reaches a level higher than your arms. Again, extend your arms and lower your body down to complete one rep.

If one set of ten pull-up reps wears you out and strains the muscles of your forelimbs, you need to get your basics right. Once you have mastered the basics and eliminated the common errors, you can easily boost the number of pull-ups that you can carry out at once.

Work on your grip and make it firm

Before you begin with pushing your body upward and downward, make sure that you have a firm grip. Start by attempting to hang from a monkey bar or a pull-up bar for a few seconds at a time. This will improve your support grip.

Without a proper grip, you will be unable to hold your position for long; let alone moving your body weight while in a hanging position! To begin with, set a timer for ten seconds and try to remain completely hung without swaying to and forth. Once you can master your ten-second goal, set yourself new challenges by increasing the duration for which you wish to hold the position.

Improving your grip strength will allow you the ability to remain suspended to the pull-up bar even if your arm and back muscles begin to give up.

Strengthen your back

To perfect your pull-ups, you need to train your back muscles. Several exercises are dedicated to training your back muscles and increasing their endurance. Your back muscles have an essential role to play if you are willing to get better at doing more pullups.

Exercises like a dumbbell row, back extension, reverse machine fly, and back extension exercises put your back muscles to work and train them to enhance their endurance capacity. Be sure to add a few sets of pull ups into your back weight training routine as a start. This will help ease you into the exercise and make it part of your existing workout routine.

Boost your arm strength

For performing strict pull-ups, you have to put the muscles in your shoulders, forearms, biceps, and triceps to use. Therefore, if you wish to elevate your pull-up game and witness improvement, you will have to increase your arm muscles strength so that they can endure the stress that you subject them to. You can try bicep curls and increase the reps to increase the endurance capacity of your forearm muscles.

Get your trainer to assist you

When you are trying pull-ups, a little bit of support can be of great assistance. Ask a friend or your trainer to hold your knees or ankle and try to pull your body upwards unless your chin is at a level higher than your hands. This will help you to gain strength eventually.

You can also try assisted pull-ups without having to count on a trainer. For this, you can use a resistance band and wrap it around the bar and underneath your feet. You can also use a pull-up machine.

Adhere to a routine to get better at pull-ups

Following a routine makes it easier for us to achieve a goal. You can strictly do a pull-up specific routine to witness improvement in the number of pull-ups you can perform in one go.

In this regard, the Armstrong pull-up routine can fetch you some of the best results. It was created by Major Charles Lewis Armstrong, who had attempted to set a world record for the most number of pull-ups performed in one exercise session. Read this post to know about the Armstrong pull-up routine in detail.

Don’t let your mental block keep you from performing the perfect pull-up

If you are a newbie at the gym, do not be embarrassed if you cannot do even two reps of pull-ups. However, if you are amongst those who can perform almost every other exercise at the gym except pull-ups, the problem might be something else.

Often, people tend to create a mental block that debars them from pulling their bodyweight upwards while they are hanging. It might be that after failing a few times, you have made peace with the fact that you cannot do pullups. Convince yourself, make up your mind about your capabilities and strength, and with proper training, you will find yourself lifting your body up in the air!

Once you have mastered the skill of doing a perfect pull-up, you are now ready to try doing as many pull-ups as possible. It might take you weeks, or even months, to get acquainted with more pullups. You have to begin with one set of ten reps and slowly increase the number of sets as your body permits.

Start with one set of ten reps and keep working until you can perform three unrestricted sets of ten reps of pull-ups without hurting your muscles! Thirty pull-ups at a stretch are enough to let you have the muscle gain you want.

Start horizontally

A good starting point would be to perform bodyweight inverted rows. These are easier to perform than traditional vertical pull ups, and provide a great base to start at. Over time you can build up the strength and reps on these rows and slowly decrease the angle to get more and more vertical until you are at a full pull up.

Get those pull ups in

While we train at the gym, sometimes the back half of our bodies are often ignored and not worked upon. Pull-ups compensate for this by counteracting the effects of the forward slouching that we do in our everyday lives.

For some people, pull-ups might be challenging to deal with. However, once you master the skill and realize the fantastic benefits of pull-ups, you will realize that trudging up the stiff hill was worth it! So, hit the gym and start working on your pull-ups now!