Trouble Doing Pull-Ups

What Peterson said.

Assistance bands will do the same thing pretty much without buying another huge, expensive machine. Choosing the right one for assisted chins is tricky so get a whole set and you’re covered.

I bought a set of bands to use temporarily during Covid and now use them all the time. That is one good thing that I got from the Covid period otherwise I’d never have tried them. I use them to loosen and warm up shoulders before upper body days and my shoulders never felt better.

Thanks @tzabcan! I forgot to mention that great and inexpensive solution, which I utilized at a previous gym. Bands are great and seems to be all the rage today. Nick Tumminello has some great articles on here with bands included. Isn’t it great?

Being ‘all the rage’ is why I never gave them a second thought and I boy was missing out on a great tool. Every once in a while I’ll get an annoying impingment in my right shoulder and doing just two movements I saw from Cavalier with bands for a couple sets clears it up .

I used them for ten minutes of shoulder loosening / warming up before upper body workouts and wouldn’t be without them. I’ll also use them at the end of a body part as a stretch or a little extra work but I know little about how to really use them so I’ll try and find these articles you mentioned.

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When you did the nautilus stuff, did you get stronger, or just have your progress stall at the usual loads?

When executing any kind of lift or exercise, some performance improvements are going to be very movement specific. To get more, you need to produce hypertrophy, especially in the FT fibers. At your age, that is hard to do, especially since you are probably actually losing FT muscle due to aging.

Idk how many folks answered you or what they said but ill tell you what worker best for me

Resistance band assisted pullups

Then center your workouts on them. Do them 3x per week. Or even do a couple sets every day

I was in the army for years and was terrible at pullups. It wasnt til about 12 years ago that i really got good at them.

today…chins
10
8
6
4
2

Dips 1x5
Holds to near MMF.

I did all my best chin ups / pull ups maybe 20 years ago, but about 5 years back I did beat my one rep max (chin ups) which was on You Tube at the time. I was always decent at them, probably because I did them from a young age and I was very skinny, but I was consistent with them. Nowadays I still do them regular, but never add more than 45 pounds to 70 (45 pounds would be maybe 7 reps these days, 70 would be a couple). I always found I got my best bodyweight reps sets following the heavy low rep or singles set, benefitting from feeling light as a feather.

I can’t say the best way for someone who cant do them to get better aside from the obvious use of bands, negative only etc but I would say whilst a worthwhile target for someone, I certainly wouldnt get too fed up if I could not master one. It’s a great exercise, but it is just one in the toolbox.