Benefits of pull ups
Strength
Pull ups or chin ups is considered one the most important exercise especially for your upper body. But, many of us aren’t able to do it. Many people who you consider strong, if put to test, won’t be able to do more than 20 pulls up. It is said that, never mess with someone who do lots of pull up, as they tend to have lots of upper body strength.
Testosterone
Pull up is a compound exercise, that means, an exercise which effects/uses different muscle groups at a single time. And, as you might be aware of, compound exercises helps in increasing the testosterone level in the body.
V-shape
Doing pull ups not only helps in increasing the testosterone level, but it also helps to build a stronger upper back. And, if you have ever wondered how come those body builder get that v-shape body. Then this is the answer for you.
Although, I am not saying that only pull ups can give you v shape, in fact many body builders that I know don’t do pull ups at all.
Cable pull down is another common exercise to build your wings/ lats. But, pull ups is 10 times much better, therefore, it is very important to learn to pull ups.
How to do more pull ups
Pull ups develop lots of upper body muscle at a single time. If you are developing all those muscles that means you are using all these muscles. So, to do pull ups, these muscles should be developed a little, if not more. If even one of these muscles is under developed, it will create a problem.
What muscles do pull ups work out?
While you are doing any one kind of pull up. You can be using your biceps, your shoulders (especially front and lateral delts), your back (lats and mid-back), your forearms, triceps, etc.
The amount of contribution each of these muscle are providing will be dependent upon the type of pull-up you are doing.
So, in order to be able to increase pull ups strength, you have to do these two things:
1) You have to train all these muscles
2) Do pull ups on regular basis.
From what I have learnt , there are many people with good upper body strength, who can’t do pulls. There are mainly two reasons behind this.
Power to weight ratio: Firstly, there power to weight ratio is very less. That means, they do have strength, but there weight is comparatively more. And, while doing pull ups this ratio is very critical.
Be consistent: And, there may be case where the power to weight ratio is good and the person has good upper body strength, but still he can’t do more than 5-10 pull ups. The only reason behind it, is that they don’t practise pull ups on the regular basis.
Like, many other exercises, you have to do it again and again, it increase your strength. After trying for sometime, most of the people stop doing them. In order to do more pull ups, you have to be consistent and persistent.
You see it for your self, next time you go to the gym, you’ll see the number of people who do pull ups will be very very less than the number of people doing other forms of upper body exercise. In spite of the fact, that pull ups is by far the best upper body exercise.
Now, coming back to how to train your body to do more pull ups. First of all, there are different type of pull ups and each type uses different muscle groups. Let us see the different type of pull ups.
Different types of pull ups require different muscles in different proportion.
1) Wide grip
2) Close grip pronated
3) Close grip supinated
Close grip pull ups are easiest, so, it is always a good idea to start with them and after sometime when your body is getting used to it, you can go on with other types of pull ups. FYI, wide grips is the toughest one.
Close grip pull ups (supinated)
Close grip supinated, is easiest because biceps have the major share in it. And, you might be very well aware of the fact that the first muscle any man wants to train as soon as he hits the gym is his biceps.
So, in general most of the people have enough juice it their biceps which makes it easy to do close grip supinated pull ups.
The other muscles that are used are shoulder, wings and forearms. So, doing this type of push ups, helps develop the back and shoulder also, which will help you in doing more advance and difficult form of pull ups.
Doing close grip pull ups also will make your body habitual of pulling your body weight up and increases your grip strength.
Close grip pull ups (pronanted)
After you get a little comfortable with close grips supinated, then you can jump to close grip pronated. It uses mostly: the front deltoid, triceps, forearms and wings etc.
It uses lots of lats. So,you should focus on strengthening the wings/lats, hammer strength machine and cable pull downs are some of the best exercises to trains the lat muscles to do pull ups better.
But, pull ups are even better. Think of hammer strength machine and cable downs as the training ground for the final fight that is pull ups.
Wide grip pull ups
To do wide grip pull ups, the main muscles you are using are forearms, shoulders, upper and mid back(lats) and triceps. So, in order to be able to do wide grip pull ups, you have to train all these muscles a little bit first.
Note: Wide grip pull ups require lot of strength in lat muscles. But, if you have done hammer strength or cable pull downs and close grip pronated then it will be lot easier for you than before.
Although, you are using front and mid deltoids the most, but some part of work is also done by rear delts. So, you have to train all the delts properly. Remember, to use very light weights while training for rear delts. When you’ll use more weights, there is a good chance that other muscles will come into picture and you don’t want that, you should strictly stay focused on rear delts.
Some Tips: For people who can’t do pull ups
1) There might be other ways to do pull ups also but these are the three major ones. Although, you can mess up with the order and try wide grip while doing close grip but I would recommend to learn to crawl before you walk, and walk before you fly.
2) Instead of doing 10 pull usp first and then 7 in the next set and falling down after two in the last set, you should do 5 set of 3, properly.
3) Go deep but not till the end. It can cause injury and break your confidence if you aren’t able to do many pull ups in that way.
4) If you want to do higher repetition, you can do this. Do 5-10 pull ups or whatever maximum you can do then go to some other exercise. After some time, return to pulls ups and repeat this. Pull ups is a very tiring exercise, and most of the people, especially beginners who are try to do it in straight sets end up totally wasted. So, it is better to take gap between each set.
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