Not Just a Man's World

Nothing impresses the guys in the gym more than strolling casually through the free-weights area, walking straight up to the pull up bar and doing a set of perfect pull ups.  I spent a long time doing lots of different exercises before I hit on the perfect routine for achieving that first pull up.

My long journey to pull ups

I have found it really difficult to build the necessary arm strength to do pull ups.  Over several years, I tried many methods, sometimes getting to the point where I could do a single pull up but never getting to two.

What’s more, once I did build the strength, I found it even harder to hang on to if I had a lay-off due to injury or even just by going on holiday for a week.  And the problem wasn’t restricted to my pull ups.  I had difficulty maintaining strength on all my arm exercises. 

Eventually, after a couple of months of not doing any specific pull up work, I tried pull-ups on the off-chance and found I could do three on my first attempt.  How did I manage it?

How to do your first pull up

1. Do higher rep work:  I find that my legs respond really well to max effort and low rep work but my arms can’t cope with it at all.  I’ll complete on a weight, put the weight up the next week and get stuck, unable to complete the new weight.  I’ve found that 3 sets of 8 reps works really well for quite a while.
2. Superset pushing and pulling exercises:  Another fantastic way I got a lasting response from my arms was to work with medium rest periods (90 seconds) and include a pull exercise followed immediately by a push exercise.  To get a decent rest period within the 90 seconds I found I was doing the exercises much more explosively.
3. Avoid over-training:  This is clear from my early training records.  In the beginning, I over-trained by doing multiple different arm exercises in a single workout.  I’ve since learnt that one push and one pull in a workout, done with good form and using the methods above, is more than enough to give me a real pump in my arms.
4. Train often:  The most important thing I’ve learnt about my arms is that if I don’t train them several times in a week, they don’t improve.  In fact they sometimes even get weaker, despite the one workout I am doing.  
5. Use assistance exercises:  The rope upright row is your best friend for building your first pull up.  Standard upright rows cause sore wrists, even using an EZ bar, and by the end of a workout my shoulders were also sore from the internal rotation caused by letting my shoulders drift forward through the set.  The rope upright row allows you to keep your shoulders back and down at all times, meaning you really can get all the benefits of the upright row (which translates really well to the pull up) without the injuries.
6. Take your time:  Forget that you want to achieve a pull up – the frustration will only make it worse.  Instead work hard at increasing your rows (my preferences are T-bar row, rope high pull) and then, on a whim, have a crack at some pull ups.

My discoveries about developing arm strength are always ongoing so let me know what you have tried, and what you’ve found works.

Related posts:

1. Blog-watch: pull ups
2. How to do the Rope Upright Row
3. Women’s strengths
4. Weight training women