How to get your first pull up

Pull ups are an awesome exercise, they work the arms, back, shoulders and core, as well as blasting your grip. But sometimes people can find it difficult to get that first pull up,  they are a difficult exercise. If you go through the following steps, you'll be doing pull ups before you know it, and you'll be able to see the difference in the mirror also.

For each of these progressions, I will be giving a progression level, once you get to this progression level, you are strong enough to move onto the next exercise. If you are having trouble increasing your repetitions have a look at this blog post for a simple way to increase your reps on an exercise.

Step 1 - High recline row.

Find something you can throw around a surface, rings are preferable, but you can use anything that can hold your weight will work, I am using a karate belt here. Stand with your feet directly underneath the anchor point with your feet shoulder width apart. Lean back, (bottom left) and pull your arms in until you are standing upright (bottom right). Lower down to the starting position and repeat.

Progression level: 3 sets of 25

 

Step 2 - Recline row.
Over time, slowly move your feet further forward (6 inches at a time works well, work up to 3 sets of 25 each time). Continue moving your feet forward until your shoulders are directly under the anchor point, row up until your hands are as close to your chest as your flexibility allows you to, lower down and repeat. At first, reach the progression level with your legs bent at 90 degrees, then straighten your legs out and work up to the progression level again.

Progression level: 3 sets of 25

Step 3 - Chin up hold

Jump up so that your chin is over the bar, and hold it.

Progression level:  3 sets of 20 seconds

Step 4 - Half pull up
Jump up so that your chin is over the bar, lower yourself down until your arms are at 90 degrees, come back up until your chin is still over the bar, repeat. If you cannot go down to half way, only go quarter way down, reach the progression level, then go to half pull ups.

Progression level: 3 sets of 10

Step 5 - full pull up
Hang from the bar, so that your arms are slightly bent, pull up until your chin is over the bar, lower down to the beginning position, repeat.

Target level: 1 set of 20

Hope this article helps
Enjoy the gains
Alex

Challenge your grip and increase your pull up strength pt 2

This is part 2 of a selection of things I am using to change up my pull up training, if you haven't seen part 1, click here to check it out
Baseballs

Just put a bolt through a baseball and hook it to a chin up bar, you can also use hockey ball or anything strong enough to hold your weight. This requires a whole new level of grip strength. When training these with lock offs, it would give me a dead arm after every rep, this will kill your biceps as well.
Fat gripz

These are grips, that are fat. They will make the chin ups more difficult. Stick them on the bar and use them for the next 4 weeks, take them off and your chin ups will be stronger
Gymnastics rings

These are difficult as hell, but I am not really sure why, one arm chins on this are crazy difficult for me, but I'm working on it.
Rock rings

These are a cool tool by Metolius, normally used by rock climbers. They have 3 levels, each one gets more narrow and the ledge gets smaller, making it more challenging, you can also grab the top and just use it as a chin up handle. I am currently using them to try and get a door frame one arm chin. So I can do them Anywhere.

Thanks, hope this helps,
Enjoy the gains
Alex

Challenge your grip and increase your pull up strength pt 1

In this post, I will be going over the different grips I am using and the grips I am trying to use in order to keep my one arm chin training. Even though I will be speaking about them in regards to one arm chins, you can also use these variations with 2 arms, rows, front levers or even deadlifts if you are a freak.

1: Towels

I know a few of this may find this weird or stupid, but this, in my opinion, is the best place to start. I remember buying 6 tea towels when i was 16, and just doing one arm hangs, and one arm lock-offs on them, and my forearms grew and my grip got stronger, they are also great because the twist, so you can supinate your hands at the top of the pull up and get a great contraction on the short head of the bicep, this free rotation can also help avoid elbow and shoulder pain.

2:Rotating handles

I'm too poor to buy a 'rolling thunder', so I just brought a pair of those cable attachments that rotate, and strapped them to the pull up bar. When you try and hang of them with just one arm it will try and tear your hand off your arm, and may succeed. But when I got a one arm chin on it for the first time, I knew I had reached a milestone in my strength. You could add a fatgrip on it and make it as thick as a 'rolling thunder', I am yet to get a one arm chin off that. But when I am able to do that, I will go out and tear someones arm off just because I can.

3: Eagle loops

These were a little bit cheaper than the 'rolling thunder' so I got them. Normally. Whats cool, is that you can slowly reduce the number of fingers you use until you you get down to one finger, my current best is a one arm chin on 2 fingers.

4: Homemade chin up handle

I just made this from chain and a pole my mate found in the woods, all we had to do was wash the blood off it and lay low for a while (that was a joke). This is good because it allows you to be able to do one arm chins anywhere, just strap it to something overhead. You can also put fatgripz on them. They also allow you to do neutral grip one arm chins on a regular chin up bar. I found the neutral grip the easiest to learn when first doing the one arm chin.

This post is already pretty long, so I will be back with more ways to switch up your chin ups.

Enjoy your gains
Alex

Me and 'ladies man' my local paper boy

Around the world - more interesting than cardio

Around the worlds are a training method developed by bar hitters in New York. The original idea consisted of push ups, pull ups and dips, 10 reps per exercise with up to and beyond 40 sets.

Sounds a lot like metabolic conditioning. So if we take this idea and put our own exercises in, but making sure that we hit the whole body, you have a work out that will make you stronger, improve GPP and burn a hell of a lot of calories depending on the exercises and the volume that you do it.

For example, today I did a circuit of one arm chins (2 reps), pistol squats(3-5 reps) and press to handstands (1 rep) for 6 rounds, and i got an effective work out in 20 minutes, and it hit my conditioning as well, jsut doing each exercise one after the other with as little rest as possible.

You can pick any 3 exercises: calisthenics, barbell work, strongman, even some isolation exercises if you want to bring up a lagging body part.

If you are training strength movements, as I am, and still want to train like this, I would recommend adding in a 'spacer exercise' or 2 to help you rest between sets, for example, I was training around the worlds yesterday, with handstand presses (1 rep) and one arm chins (2 reps). I added in a set of bulgarian split squats to help me rest more between sets. A 'spacer exercise' should be relatively easy and can be done for high reps, push ups or skipping are also good exercises



I hope this helps if you are stuck for a workout, remember, be creative, and enjoy the time away from the world, this work out can also really help clear your head.

Enjoy the gains
Alex

One arm lock offs for big dudes

Why the one arm lock off? It puts a tremendous amount of tension on the biceps, it will help improve endurance and work capacity, and it also looks cool as hell to see a big guy pull one of these off. I spent the majority of my first year in college training these. Hopped on to the preacher curl bench and got a 66lb preacher curl with one arm for 30 reps within the next few weeks.

What is a one arm lock off? It is when you hold the top of a one arm chin for time. I know its sounds easy, but just give it a go.you'll find that you get up with 2 arms, let go of one of them and you will drop like a 200 lb man trying to do a one arm lock off. Think about how strong your back and arms are now, now think about how much stronger they will be if you could do a one arm lock off for 10 seconds.

It is also a stepping stone to the one arm chin, which is also an awesome exercise. One of my goals as a personal trainer is to get as many people over 190lb doing one arm chins for reps.

The progression level:

1. Hold each lock off for 5 seconds, at the top (chin over the bar), middle and 3/4 of the chin, this is one rep.
2. To set up, do an archer pull up, with the main arm under hand, and with the other hand is going to hold onto the bar with just the 4 fingers, work your way down to a single finger, then down to just your pinky finger.
3. When you can do each progression level until you can get 5-10 sets of 2 reps, then progress onto the next level.

Once you get down to the pinky it may not be so easy to progress onto the one arm lock off: here are a few ideas to make the final step.

1. Add weight to the lock offs
2. Hang a loop off the bar at shoulder height and use your pinky on the loop to assist the one arm lock off
3. Increase number of reps and sets
4. Only assist yourself on the top of the one arm lock off, only use one arm on the middle and/or bottom holds.

Before you start one arm lock offs, become a monster at 2 arms. see if you can get 100 in 10 mins, at least 12 chins with your chin clearing the bar and 5 sets of 3 frenchies.

Don't forget to train both arms.

Enjoy the gains
Alex