There are many reasons you may be unable to do a pull-up. Maybe you’re too heavy or too weak. Maybe you’re unstable, injured, or immobile. Kipping pull-ups could be getting in your way. Or perhaps your own laziness and impatience are the culprit.

No matter the reason, one thing is clear: Telling yourself it’s impossible is the first stupid self-deprecating idea you absolutely must toss in the toilet along with the other voices being whispered in your ears. That kind of wasteful thinking won’t get you over the bar. Stop practicing self-pity, being jealous of others, and having that defeatist attitude. Instead, roll up your sleeves, put on some big-boy/big-girl pants, and let’s go to work!

Below is my beginner's pull-up plan, which will help you move into several other variations including but not limited to the coveted muscle-up. You just can’t build a strong upper body and shoulders without a deep-seated foundation--which takes time, preparation and a little bit of patience. You may currently be able to haphazardly throw your body up and down on the bar, which you tell yourself is a kip, and while you rip your rotator cuff muscles and shred the tendons and ligaments around your shoulder girdle, you’ll be slapping your own face knowing you should have just followed your coach’s advice and or read this article first!


Part 1. Isaac Newton and Body Fat Percentage

“What goes up must come down.” -Isaac Newton.

Building muscle and strength while fixing someone’s anatomical dysfunctions can take a while, but a person’s weight and body fat percentage can be much easier to rectify by a switch or two in their daily eating habits. So, let's consider a persons body fat percentage.

Pull-ups and their variation lifts are classic bodyweight exercises. That means there are no external weights like dumbbells, kettlebells, or barbells here. The people in your box pounding out rep after rep, making it look effortless, are likely light to middleweight powerhouses and have low body fat percentage because they work hard on their diet and their weaknesses. We are working against the forces of gravity, something that we can’t change, and one's body weight, which is something we can change. How empowering!

Men carrying more than 18 percent body fat and women carrying more than 25 percent body fat will work twice as hard compared to those below these percentages at pull-ups. Make a decision here, work harder or work smarter (lighter)? First, figure out what your current body fat percentage is, and where you really want it to be.

Most experts agree that a one to two percent drop in body fat per month is realistic. This timeframe has worked for all of my clients who followed a regular cardiovascular, weight training, and healthy eating program, and it will work for you, too!

Here's an example, Susie weighs 145 lbs. and has 30 percent body fat but wants to get down to 20 percent body fat so that she’ll be in the "athletic" category and have a better chance of reaching her pull-up goals. How much weight does Susie have to lose? First we look at lean muscle mass and straight fat, aka adipose tissue. We can take 145 x 30 percent = 43.5 fat, 101.5 lean mass. Now take 101.5/(1-.20) = 126. Susie can lose about 19 lbs., assuming its all fat, to be at 20 percent body fat. This can take Susie anywhere from three to five months to achieve.


Part 2: Stability & Mobility

Stabilization is the foundation for all exercise movement. I want to see that you’re able to hold your body in space very still and not break! In particular, I’m talking about scapular stabilization.

Before I list the stabilizer muscles in the shoulders, arms, and entire tors--and some of my favorite exercises to build them up—we’ll need to make sure you have little to no postural deviations, and acceptable range of motion (ROM) at the shoulder and elbow joints. Can you straighten your arms over your head comfortably with palms forward, palms backward, and palms neutral? Does your body bow like a banana or can it stay relatively straight? Try it with your back against the wall and reach overhead.

If you’re a beginner new to the world of exercise, particularly if you sit at a desk all day, you may have rounded shoulders, caved-in shortened pecs, and might be developing a humpback (thoracic kyphosis) with a forward head lean, coupled with shortened hip-flexors (anterior pelvic-tilt). If that’s the case, asking you to stand straight with arms overhead is like asking you to jump through rings of fire blindfolded. This may be due to Upper Crossed Syndrome. If there are any red flags here, you should check with your coach, chiropractor, physical therapist, or massage therapist for a treatment plan to correct these uber-tight muscle imbalances.

Dysfunction or instability of the shoulder complex, can lead to injury. Implementing some or all of these exercise a few times a week is essential to preventing possible injury. Shoulder stabilizers include the rotator cuff muscles, supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis, as well as the trapezii, serratus anterior, rhomboids, and levator scapulae. “Great, how can I make them more stable?” you ask.


Stability & Upper Extremity Exercise Rx




Choose 1 or 2 of my favorite exercises and do 3 sets of 10 every other day.

• Various Planks (front, side, reverse, bent arm & straight arm, 1 leg, with a stability ball)
• Kettlebell Windmill
• Kettlebell Bottoms-Up 1 arm Press (from the knee, standing)*
• Kettlebell Turkish Get-Ups (½ & full)*
• Parallettes L-Sit or Tuck Hold
• Face Pull & External Rotation using bands*
• Bridges, Hollow-body, Superman

*personal favorite
Part 3 Grip and Pulling Strength

Next, let’s identify a muscle contraction. There are three phases to a muscle contraction, and each spends energy differently. These include the concentric, isometric, and eccentric phases. The concentric phase of the pull-up occurs on the ascent or when your body is pulled up. The isometric phase is when you are holding the muscle static, which can be either in the down or up position. The eccentric phase is the lowering of your body until your arms straighten out. You need to practice all three phases if you want to get good at pull-ups. As a beginner, you will start in the isometric phase, before adding the eccentric phase, and lastly combining all three. Below are some exercises that every person doing pull-ups will benefit from. All of them build strength in the hands, forearms, arms, shoulders, mid-line, and back.


Program

Try using a variety of tools like dumbbells, barbells, and kettlebells. As a beginner, you may not know your 1RM but you will soon enough. Iso-lateral exercises are highly effective giving the added benefit of core strength while isolating one side at a time. People who push, pull, press, and do lop-sided muscle-ups have one side weaker than the other and can benefit immensely by including iso-lateral work hand-in-hand with their routine. See what I did there?

After a dynamic warm-up, pick one or two exercises from the stability work already listed above to include in the programs below. Ex: Dynamic Warm-Up for 10 minutes, KB Turkish Get Ups & KB Windmill for 20 minutes, proceed to Monday Workout for 75 seconds, Cool-down/Stretch for five minutes.


Monday Workout 1

3 sets/supersets

• Bent Over Rows X 10 reps
• 1 Arm Farmer’s Carry X 20 yards, as heavy as possible (AHAP)

Wednesday Workout 2

3 sets/supersets

• Iso-Chin-up X 1-30 seconds
• Heavy Deadlifts X (80-90% of 1RM) 1-3 reps, as an alternate, try a Suitcase DL which is a 1 arm DB DL!

Friday Workout 3

3 sets/supersets

• Front-Loaded Sandbag Carry X 40 yards, AHAP
• Chin-Up Negatives X 5-10 seconds

Monday Workout 4

3 set/superset

• Ring Rows X 10r, as an alternate, try 1-arm ring rows!
• GHD Back Extension X 10r, no GHD? Try Good Mornings

Power: P = W / t & Patience

Chins Before Pulls Before Kipping Before Muscle-Ups...SMART!

Kipping in itself isn’t dumb, but you know what is??? Kipping when you haven’t been able to do 10 strict pull-ups. There is no faster way to the orthopedic surgeon’s office for an X-ray and possible labrum tear, bicep tendonitis, increased shoulder instability, than to do kips when you aren’t suppose to be! This is just about as dumb as throwing a fastball to home base without the proper foundation. KEEP OUT OF THE DANGER ZONE, MAVERICK! I like this order for progression: Chin-ups (palms face you), Neutral (palms face each other), Pull-up (palms face forward). Using these progressions will lay down a nearly impenetrable wall of stability around your shoulders.

After repeating the above workouts from part 2 and 3 for an estimated four to six weeks, you may get the green light to practice chin-up singles. This is where you grab the bar palms facing you and pull yourself up and come down one time. If you have any shoulder injuries, I strongly recommend a neutral grip, palms facing each other. Similarly, you may use rings with a neutral grip to do work. Ex.: 10 sets of chins for just one round the 1st week, 10 sets of two rounds the second week, etc. You can also alternate between chins, neutral, and pulls, but know that pull-ups are more advanced and more difficult to achieve.