After a weekend delivering some bodyweight workshops at The SFN Expo with the other Combined Strength Coaches I found that many people I spoke with struggled to increase their reps on the pull up but didn’t have any idea of how to get better at this.
The frustration was evident but they were also really keen to improve on these numbers but they didn’t know how……..
They just attacked the problem by trying to do more reps, which wasn’t working.
If you are stuck with the same problem, here are my top tips to overcoming a Pull Up Plateau…….
- Improve Grip Strength – an often overlooked aspect of training, which has a great carryover to pretty much any exercise in the gym. Use fat grips, do farmers walks, plate pinch grips and other specific grip training.
- Hang – Spend more time hanging on the bar, if you want to be able to hit 10-15 pull ups then you will need to make sure you can hang on the bar for that length of time. You can incorporate some hangs in between sets of other exercises. When it is ‘rest’ time in between your sets then go and perform a 20-30 second hang in between each set. If you do this each workout over a period of time then you will accrue a lot of time on the bar. This will help us when it comes to our pull ups.
- Use Rowing Movements – To build up the strength required for pull ups you should include some Rowing Movements. Exercises such as Bent Over Rows, Inverted Rows, Batwings, Pulldowns etc are all great exercises to strengthen the movement patterns and muscle groups that we use when performing the pull up.
- Add Some Weight – If you are stuck on a set number of reps on the pull up then try doing some weighted pull ups for single reps rather than chasing with multiple reps.
- Grease the Grove – Rather than focusing all your reps to one part of the workout and getting fatigued quickly then try to sneak in lots of reps over the course of your workout. Similar to point 2, carry out 1-2 reps during rest periods or even better get a pull up bar at home and get plenty reps in throughout the day.
These are all strategies I have used with my clients and in my own training to help build up reps in the Pull Up. Give one of the methods a shot for a few weeks and watch your pull up numbers increase. You can alternate between the different strategies from month to month.
Please share with someone who would find this information useful and let me know if it helps you.
Coach Milligan 