You’ve probably noticed that pull ups are a significant part of my workout structure. This has been a conscious decision for three key reasons:
- as a woman there is real satisfaction in being able to do good quality reps of pull ups, rather than the partials that you so often see people doing in the gym while their friends stand about watching them in awe;
- they have been great for building up my lat strength – I used to have zero visible lats and now I can’t get into my evening dress (bought in the days BT – Before Training) because my lats have developed so much; and
- early on in my training I found that if I left them out of my program for a month or two I lost my ability to do them again – while this is no longer such a concern for me, I find them so satisfying that I’m loathe now to take the risk.
Women can do pull ups
I’ve been holding onto some links about pull ups for a while now, which I didn’t want to post up because I was hoping there would be more. However, I had a fantastic pull up week last week, which saw my total pull ups in a workout increase to a new PB of 36 reps (I’m still not quite three at 10 sets of 4 reps and long term I’m aiming for 10 sets of 5 reps without weight). The last few months have also seen me move to some modest weighted pull ups with 5 rep maxes with and additional 10% bodyweight.
To celebrate, here are some links to compliment the post I wrote early on in my blogging life about doing pull ups as a woman, providing some guidance on doing and improving pull ups.
- Starting at the beginning, Al Kavadlo suggests using Australian pull ups as a way to get started towards doing your first pull up. I’ve not tried this myself – I used assisted pull ups with negative reps and a foot in a sling to get me to my first rep. However, if you’re interested in trying these then you can find an introduction to Australian pull ups elsewhere on the blog. For those who are confused, I think these are really horizontal bodyweight rows. The trick to making those harder is to slowly work from a position where your head is above your feet to where your feet are higher than your head.
- Once you’ve got your one pull up then you may want to read Jason Ferruggia’s post about the Top 10 ways to improve your pull ups. The thing I enjoyed most about this post was his very descriptive story about watching a father trying (and failing) to do a single pull up in the children’s playground in an attempt to show off to his child. I completely agree with Jason that the pull up is an excellent indicator of overall strength.
- To advance your pull ups through sticking points, you could then try watching Mike T Nelson’s video with tips on improving pull ups. After watching this I saw an instant improvement to my pull ups, probably because I picked up a vital tip on the position of my head. This has really helped me to start using my lats properly too, instead of my traps.
- For women wanting some inspiration at this point, have a read of an interview with Asha Wagner. She’s done some amazing stuff and has superb strength and has completed the Iron Maiden Beast Challenge at the RKC certification – requiring a pull up with a 24kg kettlebell. I currently only dream of adding that sort of weight to my pull up.
- For some tips on pull ups, including the different grip variants and ways to deal with shoulder injuries, I can’t do better than to recommend the pull up series (you’ll find links to the full set on the final article) written by my own partner, Chris. He’s a pull up specialist, having previously been a competitive swimmer with subsequent big shoulder and lat strength, and is working towards some incredible pull up goals at the moment. His pull up knowledge (obsession?) knows no bounds so there are plenty of other articles about pull ups on the blog including a two part series on keeping your shoulders injury free for pull ups. I’ve gone a long way with my pull ups in a surprisingly short space of time under his guidance, so I do recommend his suggestions.
- Finally, have a look at this video for an example of poor form on what is announced as being a pull up. I’m impressed by the nature of the challenge, but I was less impressed when I saw the small range of motion of Emma Robinson’s pull ups. What is good about them is that she goes all the way to the top of the movement, but she only goes halfway down which is more of a bodybuilding movement to work specific muscles rather than get the full potential benefits of the pull up. For an example of good pull ups I refer you back to Mike T Nelson’s video but for some inspiration of the sorts of challenges we can take on as women, this video is still worth checking out for some light entertainment.
I hope I’ve inspired a few people to get out their pull up bars and revisit, or finally master, this truly satisfying exercise.
If I’ve not, then perhaps this video of a 44 year old woman doing 39 pull ups will:
Have fun with them!
Related posts:
Al Kavadlo emailed me about the video I linked to here of Emma Robinson’s pull ups. I’ve had his permission to provide an extract here:
“Emma and I are both aware that her pull-ups are still a work in progress.
Unfortunately, the nature of that challenge sort of encourages quantity over
quality, which is usually the opposite of how I do things, but we we’re just
having fun with that one.
Shooting that clip was actually very helpful for Emma because it was the first
time she ever saw herself do a pull-up. She had the same reaction as you–she
was disappointed to see that she wasn’t going as low as she knows she ought to
be. ”
There’s a couple of really important points here which I though were worth highlighting.
1. A “rep-out” challenge tends to encourage poor form – I couldn’t agree more. For a while I tried a max-effort workout style where I did a max effort weight for a fixed number of reps and then tried to rep out on something a bit lighter, aiming for more reps on the same weight each week. However, I had to abandon it because I was developing poor form on several of my lifts as a result. In particular my pull ups, where my tendency is to resort to using my more dominant traps rather than my lats when I start to tire, were starting to revert to always using my traps. This is therefore definitely something worth keeping an eye on if you decide to try any repping-out workout techniques.
2. Nothing beats watching a video to get a feel for what you are doing right or wrong. I get Chris to film me periodically (the latest videos are coming this Sunday – Powerlifting progress 2010: week eighteen) because he can tell me all he likes about what I’m doing right or wrong but I never fully grasp the extent of what I’m doing wrong and fully correct for it until I’ve seen it for myself.
Thanks for your comments Al – there’s definitely some good learning reminders from your email.
How are you doing, great blog, just been viewing various blogs and yours seems a pretty interesting site. It’s always great when you can be entertained as well as educated at the same time. Fantastic!
I think this comment is spam, but I’ve left it in because the piece of equipment on the URL link looks pretty good and I’m guessing a few of you who visit this post don’t have a pull up bar yet. Personally, we’ve got a couple of the old kind that screw outwards to wedge into a doorway.