The Pullup (Video)

The "Pullup" is a compound exercise that develops overhead and upper body pulling strength.

Pullups require a very strong and horizontal bar held between six to seven feet high. The pullup should be approached with chalk on your hands; this way, the grip doesn't fail and can keep up with the lats in pulling power. The pullup starts with your hanging and your feet suspended off the floor. You should pause between each rep; before you begin to pull to assure that you are doing full reps and not partial reps. Doing this will also allow you to fight momentum, where you would not be swinging at the top of and bottom of each rep and allow the core to have a smoother contraction.

After the first rep, slowly lower yourself back down and pause for about the amount of time it takes to breath in and out, then perform your 2nd rep. Make sure your arms are extended each rep so that the biceps and brachioradialis, as well as the lats have a farther distance that you have to travel in order to complete the rep. You should aim for about ten to twenty reps per set without exhaustion. If you cannot do this, then continuously try to adapt to the movement and improve rep count each pullup session.

Pullups require that the core be stabilized isometrically the entire time that you hang. Other muscle groups that isometrically contract are the glute muscles, the erector spinae and the forearms. The act of pulling your body up assures balance with its opposite motion - the overhead press. Pullups are a prime example of downward rotation of the scapulae while the press is an example of upward rotation. This assures that each muscle gets its function worked properly and allows muscular overload on both sides of the point.

Pullups are a bodyweight exercise, so they can be done everyday. If you cannot do pullups everyday, then you can simply do them every other day. Bodyweight movements have been shown (through experience) to increase the more frequently they're performed - take the military for example. In my experience of personal training, you need to perform pullups and focus much attention of the final reps on the isometric contraction and lower yourself slowly during the eccentric phase so properly overload and allow further expansion of growth.

The only forms of pullups that should be looked over are behind the head pulls. Behind the neck pulls stress the rotator cuff; you do not want to do this. The teres minor is recruited through pullups and not chinups, making it an overall more productive exercise for the shoulders, but the chinups are arguably better because they put the biceps in a more efficient pulling position and allow the lats to work harder without failure of the biceps. The biceps are much smaller, and can usually give out before the lats; the same thing goes with the brachioradialis.

               How To Do Your First Pullup