MASTERING PULL-UPS - GERRICK KING

 Snapple Fact: The average person walking down the street cannot perform a pull-up.
 
A Step-By-Step Guide to Mastering Pull-Ups
 
My life's mission is to help my clients reach their fitness goals, which often includes performing a proper pull-up. Using a specific set of strategies that I've developed, I have transformed many of my clients from being a pull-up zero to pull-up hero. Employing these five strategies will have you doing more pull-ups than you ever thought possible!

1.       Use a Resistance Band
Place your knee or foot in the resistance band depending on how much the resistance band stretches. You are going to perform a pull-up and begin patterning the actual movement. The thicker the band, the more assistance you will get. As you progress, you can use a thinner band and work your way up.

2.       Perform the Eccentric Portion of the Pull-Up
​(“The Negative”)
Jump up and slowly lower yourself back down. You can use a box to get to the top because jumping eats up some of your energy. This is the eccentric portion; the lowering and lengthening phase of the pull-up movement.

  3.       Perform the Strong Component of the Lift
Perform the strong component of the lift, which is midpoint to the top.

 4.       Perform the Weak Component of the Lift
​(The Most Difficult)
Perform the weakest component of the lift, which is bottom (hanging) to midpoint. This is very taxing and utilizes a lot of energy because you have the least biomechanical advantage in this portion of the lift.

Eventually, you are going to start to put this all together. Most likely, you will only be able to perform one pull-up at a time. It will be a bit of a struggle, but we need more than one pull-up in order to develop the strength and capability for this exercise. The last strategy will allow you to cluster repetitions as a set so you can build up volume and the number of reps that you are doing

5.       Rest, Pause!
Put it all together by doing one pull-up at a time and rest in between. You can rest up to 30 seconds before performing the next repetition. Over time, you can lower the rest between pull-up repetitions.

 Be patient, it takes time.
 
It can take a few weeks to transition through each of these steps, but if you are consistent, it will come together in time. Mix and match these exercises to see what works best for you.

This is everything you need to know to go from pull-up zero to pull-up hero. Try them out and let us know what you think! Post videos of your progress and use our hashtag #ConsistencyIsKing to be featured on our social media!

​Good Luck!