After reading the title to this post, I can almost guarantee that you want to do a Pull-up. I can coach you through that. If you can already do several, I am willing to bet that you want to do more. It might be as simple as having your training partner touch you. (Minds out of the gutter!) If you are bangin' out Pull-up after Pull-up with little effort then you might want to hear how I teach my athletes to progress to the muscle-up. Not easy, but if they were, everyone would do them, right? I can’t wait to make you Elite!
In the first segment you will learn the Negative. There isn’t a negative thing about this lovely exercise because it's going to start a beautiful relationship between you and your friend, the Pull-up bar. With this exercise you will get used to bearing your body's weight with your hands, as well as acclimate the body to the path it will be traveling in a bodyweight Pull-up.
To do your first negative you are going to need a bar that is low enough to grab with both feet on the ground and a bend in your knees. The idea behind this is that you will be using a larger, stronger muscle group, the legs, to jump yourself up to the top of the Pull-up position. The top being your chin above bar level. Grab the bar with a grip approximately the width of your shoulders and bend your knees so your arms are straight. Now that you are in the starting position you are ready to go. You are going to jump off the ground and simultaneously pull up with your arms fast. That should have gotten your chin at or above bar level so now you are ready to put those arm and back muscles through the ringer. You now know the way up so let's talk about how you are going to control yourself back down in order to get stronger.
The way you are going to develop your Pull-up strength from here on out is going to be a hard pull as you jump and a controlled trip back down with your arms. You will be explosively jumping your chin just above bar level and then controlling yourself down for a count of 3. On every rep you will start with arms straight, jump/pull to the top, then slowly control yourself back down until your arms are straight.
To become comfortable with the movement I am going have you do 5 sets of 5 Negative Pull-ups 3 times a week. I would like to see every rep be a quality rep. Remember quality over quantity!
Please stay tuned in for your next progression to bodyweight Pull-ups.
"putting your arm and back muscles through the ringer" is a completely accurate statement Geoff! lol, I'm not sure I ever even knew I had muscles in some of the areas that are sore! I can't WAIT til I can do a real pull up....thats all I want to do, just one! :-)
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