I’m stuck at about 14 rep pull-up sets these days. When I’m cutting I can get quite a few more.
What have you personally done to improve your pull-up numbers? I’ve heard of people doing direct forearm work for pull-ups, with some success. Others advocate towel pull-ups. Anybody have any “tricks” for boosting your numbers? I love pull-ups but find them frustrating…I progress in nearly every other exercise except them…
Grease the groove, 40-60% of your max reps 3-4 times a day.
I recently got 23 at 200 lbs.
When I was working on increasing my reps at bodyweight I would do clusters to failure for all my sets. My back seems to profit from high volume.
The best way to get better at doing pull-ups is to do a whole bunch of them, and to do them more often in the week… like 3x/week or more.
There’s a bunch of ways you can go about doing this: weighted chins or weighted pull-ups one day, max rep sets, doing sets until you reach a certain # of total reps, doing sets between every other exercise in that session, doing ring pull-ups, etc. [u]Just do a lot of reps, often.[u/]
Two years ago I shot from 13 to 20 pretty quickly by just doing a max set every other day. That will catapult you up there pretty quickly. Take the weekends off from this though, that way you can continue to gradually improve them rather than actually being able to do less overtime. I’ve known a few guys that tried to do that shit daily, even though I told them to avoid that, and their numbers slowly dropped over the course of a couple of a weeks.
The forearm work and towel pullups are fine, but what keeps me at around 30 reps is when I do weighted pullups my last set will consist of doing my 3-4 rep max, then jettison a plate and do 6-7 more, then I drop everything and go to failure, trying to get around 8 more. I’ve gained a lot of weight in the last couple of years, but I can still do that same amount of pullups, and I’m pretty sure it’s because of this.
If you usually don’t do weighted pullups but you can do 14 unweighted, then try using a 25 or 35 pound plate to do what I just outlined, editing the numbers to match up with your abilities. If you don’t have a dip belt then you can try the dumbbells.
Also, because of the organization that I’m in, I’ve helped train quite a few kids straight out of high school to get them to a good level of military-style fitness. Pullups are one of the things that I’ve helped multiple people improve, and the advice that I give them is usually what I just posted. If the heightened frequency doesn’t do anything, then the weighted pullups (not as often, obviously) will.
Google the Armstrong pullup program. (High frequency, but still doable. Got me to 19)
Fat bar pullups: do these instead of regular pullups for a month and then go back. (Got me to 21)
5/3/1 template. Seriously.
5x5 weighted pullups. i did these for a year every back workout and I have pretty decent pullup strength now.(my best is 27, and I can do 3plates for 4)
Train them like you would trying to gain on any other exercise. Weighted pull-ups help a ton.
Yep, pick up a Dip belt and treat pullups like any other Pyramid style ramping exercise.
I had some basic questions on improving the pull-up (areas that I was keen to know more of).
I’ve only done assisted pull-ups in the past using the machine with assisted plates in the gym, I believe it compensates for weight to assist in the pull-up. Over the last two months I’ve worked supinated chin-ups and tried to hold for up to 30 seconds per set (4 sets). I started only being able to hold for 12 seconds, I can do 30 seconds on my first set now. I did 3 chin-ups over the weekend so I believe I’m making progress, but I want to be a lot better and make the chin-up a staple of my exercise regime. Anyway:
EDIT : If you need me to add what specific program I’m doing for my back, I’ll happily oblige.
Thank you.
Ive done 33 at 150lbs. I can break 20 pretty easy at 170+.
How many times per week do you do pullups? How many pullups do you do?
Frequency is key imo.
[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
Train them like you would trying to gain on any other exercise. Weighted pull-ups help a ton.[/quote]
It’s not exactly the same wanting to improve repetitions above 15-20 on one exercise and trying just to raise the one repetition max. One can chin-up with his entire weight extra added, but that doesn’t automatically mean that he can do 30+ bodyweight reps. Max weight effort and max rep effort use entirely different energy sources and don’t demand the same training.
First things first, Why do you WANT to do so many reps in a set? I mean if the goal is a bigger/stronger back, i definitely recommend to pick up the dip belt, and drop the high rep stuff.
Check out some of Harry Selkow’s pullup articles over on EliteFTS.
[quote]Akuma01 wrote:
First things first, Why do you WANT to do so many reps in a set? I mean if the goal is a bigger/stronger back, i definitely recommend to pick up the dip belt, and drop the high rep stuff.[/quote]
This is a good point.
[quote]desolator wrote:
[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
Train them like you would trying to gain on any other exercise. Weighted pull-ups help a ton.[/quote]
It’s not exactly the same wanting to improve repetitions above 15-20 on one exercise and trying just to raise the one repetition max. One can chin-up with his entire weight extra added, but that doesn’t automatically mean that he can do 30+ bodyweight reps. Max weight effort and max rep effort use entirely different energy sources and don’t demand the same training.[/quote]
Are you fucking kidding me bro? Increase your 1 RM by 50-100 pounds and your telling me the reps on all lower weights won’t increase when you are considerably stronger? GTFO
[quote]desolator wrote:
[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
Train them like you would trying to gain on any other exercise. Weighted pull-ups help a ton.[/quote]
It’s not exactly the same wanting to improve repetitions above 15-20 on one exercise and trying just to raise the one repetition max. One can chin-up with his entire weight extra added, but that doesn’t automatically mean that he can do 30+ bodyweight reps. Max weight effort and max rep effort use entirely different energy sources and don’t demand the same training.[/quote]
Virtually all guys benching 585-675+ raw can get 405 for 19-25 quick reps though… Or 315 for 30-40…
Of course there are different ways of reaching high pull-up numbers still.
Weighted pullups are definitely the way to go but don’t do less than 5 reps on those. If you can do 15 pullups focus on weighted for 5 and 10 reps. Like what other people said use the same methods used to increase a 1RM but don’t actually do a 1RM pullup. You basically just need a range of weight/reps to work in. When 1 stalls out work on the others, or work on all at once and hopefully progess will come slowly but never stall.
[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
[quote]desolator wrote:
[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
Train them like you would trying to gain on any other exercise. Weighted pull-ups help a ton.[/quote]
It’s not exactly the same wanting to improve repetitions above 15-20 on one exercise and trying just to raise the one repetition max. One can chin-up with his entire weight extra added, but that doesn’t automatically mean that he can do 30+ bodyweight reps. Max weight effort and max rep effort use entirely different energy sources and don’t demand the same training.[/quote]
Are you fucking kidding me bro? Increase your 1 RM by 50-100 pounds and your telling me the reps on all lower weights won’t increase when you are considerably stronger? GTFO[/quote]
You don’t have the right to tell me to get out, since you don’t own this forum AFAIK. And chill out, don’t you have other things to do in real life than getting mad to some random guy on the internet on a discussion about weight training?
And now to answer your “arguement”. If someone has a 14RM and increases his weighted pullup by 50 lbs, of course his bodyweight reps will increase. The thing that you are insufficient to understand though is that, at about 20-25 reps, increasing your maximum strength won’t always increase the bodyweight reps, or AT LEAST, they will increase slower than a direct high rep training program.