Barbell Shrugged - Pimp Your Pull-ups: How To Go From Pull-up Zero to Pull-up Hero EPISODE 181

Episode Date: June 10, 2015

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we talk about how to pimp your pull-ups. How to go from pull-up zero to pull-up hero. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe, standing here with Doug Larson, Chris Moore. Got CTP and Charlotte behind the cameras. And CTP's also wearing a microphone, so he may chime in. Nope.

He just did. All right. That counts. Today we're going to be talking about pimping your pull-ups. Yeah, we're having fun with the names at this point. The pull-up is very elusive for very many, and we're going to be teaching you how you might be able to conquer that guy. Make sure you go to barbellstrug.com, sign up for the newsletter,

and we'll be sending you only the coolest of news. It's a cool title, but I don't think it beats out how to add math to that ass from last week. Nothing will ever beat that. We can aspire to that. Yeah. I mean, it kind of sets a standard to shoot for. That's like the stars, and maybe we'll get to the moon. I'm putting forth the full effort.

We're talking about pull-ups. As if there were stars between us and the moon. Shoot for the stars. If you miss, you'll land in total nothingness. Good luck out there. The moon could end up there. Like, you know, trajectory. I don't know.

Physics. Yeah, physics and shit. Yeah, so we're talking about this today because a lot of people are confused about pull-ups. They go into a gym and they've been doing, you know, maybe some banded pull-ups or they've been using the Gravitron. A lot of pull-downs. No one knows what a Gravitron is anymore. The Gravitron was extremely useful back in the day. The Gravitron stayed out in the wild.

Yeah, but it's not in your typical. It's not in a cross or gym. You don't see them in weightlifting gyms. You want to tell the folks who don't know what that is? But a Gravitron is a magical machine where you can put your knees. It's got a little platform you can put your knees. You can set the weight. There's a pull-up bar,

and it will support your weight evenly throughout the entire movement. The Gravitron, I actually think, is better than a band. Yeah, I think so too. The Gravitron's kind of cool. Like, you put your knees on that little platform, and then it'll take off. If you put the pin, it's a cable machine, essentially.

If you put the pin at 80 pounds of weight, it'll just take off 80 pounds evenly throughout the whole movement, rather than like a band where it takes off a whole lot of the bottom but not very much at the top or the the resistance changes so much with the band just like that you're not fat anymore just with the move of the pin gravity's gone actually i haven't seen i haven't seen one of those in forever but i remember having them and like and all the bodybuilding gyms i grew up in they all had at least one i I used them in high school, too. It probably cost like $2,500 for that one piece of equipment.

Oh, probably more. Yeah. I mean, I used it because I couldn't do a pull-up, and no one was there to teach me how to do a pull-up. So I'm sure that cemented my bad technique forever. Yeah, so we realize a lot of people are confused about getting their first pull-up, or maybe they can only do a few, and they want to be able to do 10, or they want to be able to do a lot of kipping pull-ups safely. So we're here to kind of help, hopefully, shed some light on some progressions,

programming, mobility, things that help get you where you need to be. Yeah, and if you're a person that already can do some kipping pull-ups and you've accomplished the task of figuring out that first kipping pull-up, which is kind of the name of the game when you're first getting started. And then ideally at some point you're going to move on to being able to do a full strict pull-up, which even though you could do a kipping pull-up before a strict pull-up, more than likely it doesn't mean that you should continue to do lots of kipping pull-ups because more than likely if you can't do a strict pull-up

or hopefully more like three or five strict pull-ups, then by doing a lot of kipping pull-ups before you're strong enough to control yourself, especially once you get fatigued, more than likely you're going to hurt yourself, which hundreds if not thousands of people have done that, probably more than that at this point. And they've hurt their shoulders, and it's a hard thing to come back from. So hopefully we can shed some light on how to, if you already have a hurt shoulder, get back in the mix where you can continue to do pull-ups without, you know, further injuring that shoulder. So if I can't do pull-ups, should I just ditch the idea and maybe just do something else? Or

do you think pull-ups are super important? I think pull-ups are super important. Like, you don't, there's nothing inherently special about doing a kipping pull-up other than the fact that it's just the fastest way that we know of to get your your chin from you know arm's length to over the bar in you know in a repetitive manner and so that gets you through a wad really fast and that gets you a good time and that makes you look really cool in front of people and whatnot but as far as uh the pull-up actually being the kipping pull-ups makes me look cool yeah i need to start using. If you get a good time and you win, that's why people do it. Me doing kipping pull-ups does not make me look cool.

Yeah, but it's just one more way. If you're just looking for general fitness, the pull-up is just one more way to work all of your pulling muscles. So you could do a regular dead hang pull-up or you could do a chin-up or a wide pull-up or or ring rows or bent rows or one-arm rows or the list goes on and on there's many different exercises you could do that are pulling exercises that'll still work all those same muscles you know your you know work work your lats and your rhomboids and your lower traps and your your posterior delts and your biceps and etc etc but you don't have to necessarily do pull-ups but they are a very good way to to work all those muscle groups i mean they're well the way we kind of think do pull-ups, but they are a very good way to work all those muscle groups. I mean, the way we kind of think about pull-ups is they're kind of like squats for your upper body.

Like out of all the upper body movements that you could do, you're probably working the most muscles in one single movement when you're doing pull-ups. So I think you get a lot of bang for your buck by doing them. But if for some reason you can't do a pull-up, your shoulder hurts, or you just don't have the mobility to do it, which means you're probably going to hurt your shoulder in the future then it's okay to do something else it's okay to do ring rows for a while and seated rows and bent rows and all the other stuff that i just mentioned while you're working on your mobility so you can eventually get to pull-ups because you do get a lot of bang for your buck by doing them but i'm not patient that sucks and i want to do pull-ups you're right i want a huge v taper right now. I've actually taken several, I'd say probably maybe I'm on my fourth run where my shoulder's too jacked up to do pull-ups.

It gets some kind of strain or something in the shoulder. And every time I go to rows, and it's funny is anytime I take some time off and then I really focus on a lot of horizontal pulling, I come back to pull-ups and they're even stronger. They should be in balance. That strength should be in balance. I don't know how many times. And I think that happens.

I think pull-ups actually get over-programmed in a lot of programs. It's like almost if you're doing it more than twice a week or you're doing more than a total of like 200 or 300 in a week, then that might be a little too much. That's a lot of volume, man. That's a lot of volume, man. It's a lot of volume for that same movement. And there's ways to train the same muscles. They're responsible for doing the pull-up in different ways.

For me, I think doing as much horizontal rowing as you do with vertical pulls or horizontal pulls is a good way to keep that balance, keep you injury-free. Yeah, one-to-one ratio. And just make youfree. Yeah, one-on-one ratio. And just make you stronger. Yeah, one-on-one ratio of vertical pulling to horizontal pulling I think is a great idea for most people.

If you can keep that, you can also later on when it comes down to push your press, your bench press, your squat, your deadlift, I think having that inherent balance in your back and musculature will keep you healthy and help you pursue strength for longer. Yeah, I think there was a period of time early in my training where I did have that nice balance. And then as I got into more weightlifting and CrossFit, I definitely had way more vertical pulling and more pull-ups in my program. And I think that probably led to some injuries and overdevelopment in some areas and underdevelopment in other areas. And I think that's a very common mistake you see in a lot of programs is just not enough balance yeah it's harder than just doing more of this stuff right having a balance is what's key yeah it's a bummer that the way that the

like the girl workouts and the hero workouts the way that met cons in general are are performed the way that the way you need to have a movement design is that it can be cyclical in some fashion there it's rare that you're going to see something like a one-arm dumbbell row in a metcon it's just not a very metconny type movement for whatever sexy man yeah for whatever reason that it's awesome for getting jacked guns but i guess not good for me it's it's a great movement and there's there's many benefits to it but for some reason just doesn't seem like you would put it in a metcon just it's just kind of weird so so people don't and so people that just do kind of hopper style workouts or they just they just do a blog programming or they just metcon all the time or however you want to phrase

it they tend to almost exclusively do vertical pulling they only do pull-ups and they rarely do bent rows one-arm rows seated rows they rarely do a lot of horizontal pulling they might do they might do a ring row but they almost view it as like it's it's the thing that you do if you can't do pull-ups and so i don't want to do it because that means that i'm not any good or i'm not strong or i'm or i'm being a pussy or whatever even though that they whoa bro i'm not being a pussy bro even though it's a totally separate movement it has totally set a separate set of benefits and a totally different reason to do it compared to horizontal pulling like pull-ups,

they just choose not to do it for whatever reason. So because of that, they only do a lot of horizontal pulling and then they get a lot of shoulder problems as a result. Doing a bunch of any one thing without balance is bad, right? That's probably just as bad as doing nothing but a bunch of bench presses for your shoulders. Yeah, it's damn near the exact same thing. If you only bench press and you never do anything else,

you're going to get shoulder problems. If you only do kipping pull-ups and you never do anything else, you're going to get a lot of shoulder problems. On that note, we do a lot of overhead pressing as well. We do a lot of jerks and snatches and handstand push-ups and thrusters and regular push presses, et cetera, et cetera. There's just a lot of overhead work done in general in CrossFit and not quite as many horizontal pushing things. Like we certainly do pushups and occasionally

there, there's a bench press, but compared to the big list of overhead things that I just threw out there, that's not a lot of horizontal options compared to vertical options. So, you know, if you're programming for yourself or you're programming for a gym or you have a coach programming for you, you should look to see if you have some amount of, of balance in your program, especially if you're, if you're off season or you're far out from a competition, there's, there's a lot of reason to, to have that variety for the longterm health of your shoulder and for the rest of the joints in your body for that matter. Um, you know, cause we're talking about pull-ups and upper body shoulder type stuff right now, but certainly knees and back and hips and et cetera, et cetera.

All the other joints, they have a similar set of movements where they need some amount of balance as well, which we're not talking about here today. But you should have a very balanced program, especially in the off-season. And then leading up to competition, yeah, at that point, you probably should ramp up the things that are more specific to what you might see in that competition. And then you can do more kipping pull-ups and you can do more hand kipping, handstand pushups and all the things that are more CrossFitty. If you're going into a CrossFit style competition, but in the off season, that's a good time to scale back all the overhead stuff and do some more of the horizontal stuff. That way you have some balance, um, around the,

the year as a whole. Yeah. And a lot of that stuff that you can throw in, you can throw it in during strength work and you may not do it during a Metcon. You may not do it when you it when you're exercising for time. But I think most people have kind of figured out that you can strength train like four to five days a week. You can strength train and then do your conditioning. So if you're doing – Well, you should.

Yeah. I mean if you're not trying to win something that day and you're doing pull-ups that day, it might be good to do some rows in there as well. Or the next day after you do a lot of pull-ups, do some rows to help balance that out a little bit. But again, I've noticed that any time I've thrown in horizontal rows and taken a break off of pull-ups, my pull-ups actually get stronger. And that's one of the things we want to kind of cover today is a lot of times people hit plateaus. And a lot of people hit plateaus with reps. They can't get past nine reps, and they want to get that tenthth rep on pull-ups and they just can't seem to get there or if you're chris spieler trying to get to 100 uh golly but

uh yeah one of those ways to break those plateaus is just to throw in some movements like the answer is not always more of that movement uh we got a pit shark over here uh getting better at squats i mean you learn from louis simmons uh the best way to get better at squats isn't exactly always doing a straight bar squat you know it's a safety bar squat exactly the point there's a balance it's only gonna get worse if you keep trying to practice the same sort of overworn skill so achieving the balance will help you break out of a rut you've created for yourself more variety and the pulling movements for sure yeah i mean we talked to coach somer and he he's a gymnastics coach and he you know in that conversation pointed out that he's a really big fan of climbing rope like if you can't do legless rope climbs you know easily and effortlessly for

for multiple ascents then your pulling strength probably isn't where it needs to be and that's uh that's a very good way to to develop some pull-up strength by trying to climb climb a rope i'm a big fan of sitting on the ground with your legs straddled and then staying in that in that kind of straddled position while you're climbing the rope and then you don't necessarily have to go up 20 feet every single time you climb up to 10 feet and then just kind of hop off and then sit down and do it again that way you can you can practice that that legless rope climb without being you know 20 feet in the air when your arms are totally exhausted so you can kind of you can kind of ease into it without being so high up off the ground uh and that's that's so

much harder than doing a pull-up on a regular straight bar especially especially bicep wise like grip wise bicep wise it's a different stimulus you can do that you don't have to worry about the other that's kind of his progression in the muscle ups like if you if you can't do the rope climbs you have no business trying a muscle up you don't have the strength to kind of hold that that that thing that dangles center and pull you know the thing that dangles in front of your face? You always swat away. No, no, not now, not now.

As it was coming out of my mouth. I don't love the circus anymore. I want to go home. Yes, I remember back in when we opened up the CrossFit box, CrossFit Memphis in 2007. And everybody was either, it was one of those things where you either could do pull-ups or you couldn't and people just get on the bar and try watching the video and trying to figure out how to do the thing I can do that looks easy enough right it's funny it's because uh prior to that you either did strict pull-ups or you didn't do them at all and if you

moved your body at all you were cheating and that wasn't cool oh yeah out of the bodybuilding era like it was like strict everything you couldn't you couldn't kip at all or you were like totally cheating yeah yeah you get made fun of thrown out of the gym you would never get your wide v taper doing that kind of nonsense which does doing sloppy pull-ups you might as well go home any ice cream that's the way you're gonna train your lats people thought that too like i used to read all the time when i was when i was younger like i was 12 13 years old and bodybuilding magazines like if you if you grab wide it'll make you wider and like if you grab narrow like it'll add thickness

to like your mid upper back in the middle i used to do quite a bit of anything to do with anything wide stance pull down snigging that would do it would it get wider grab grab wider it made perfect sense to me 13 year old kid and uh you know the local gym it is good to change up your grip but uh that's not how exactly it works and that's that's totally all right yeah on that note i find it's really weird that that people don't have as wide of a variety as of grips that they choose to do in most crossfit gyms compared to because crossfit's like all about having a lot of variety and bodybuilding how they emphasize variety too but it's not emphasized quite as much I think as it is in CrossFit because CrossFit must be different every day it's like variety between movements but not variety within movements

right exactly that's where most of your options for variety lie within the movement remember the diamond push-ups yeah nobody does diamond push-ups in crossfit they i don't know why they totally should tricep blaster dude well yeah they i'm not sure why we don't do more chin-ups as an example like that's not a crazy variation but i don't see many people doing that many chin-ups in crossfit yeah they totally should they should yeah definitely i think the chin-up that would be or what would be called, supine? Yeah. Fans. Fans. These are my fans. My hands. Hands facing your face and pulling up.

That way, I find a lot of people who are having a hard time doing hands away, the traditional pull-up, if they just switch their hands around, a lot of times they can get a pull-up they couldn't get otherwise. Or they can get more reps or something like that. If I'm being completely honest, I cannot do a double overhand. It's like a 12-year-old girl trying to get over the thing. Although there's probably 12-year-old girls who are way better at that than me. But I can only do it if I go palms under and pulling, like a chin-up style. I think we should do something with you. We should get some video of you doing pull-ups.

We can. If you want to try to run some progressions through me down a one-on-one or something where there's actually robust steel-welded pull-up bars that'll hold me. I don't have anything here, but I'm down for it. But the point, Doug's point about mixing up the grip that's like if you go to west that's one of the quickest ways they'll have you add uh weight to your bench presses when you do your sets on bench like your speed stuff when you're doing 10 sets real quick each time you do it you do it with a different grip wide medium close because you're going to find some place where you're not comfortable

right you gotta learn how to beat that bar is wide with lots of places to grab for a reason you know yeah usually people only want to grab the one spot that they're most comfortable with because that's that's the grip that they can get the most reps with or do the most weight with and they don't want to have to do 10 pounds less than last time because they move their grip out a couple inches and so it's more of an ego thing than it is an actual performance thing you would do less that day but you would probably get a better benefit from it in the long term you would get stronger from having that slightly different stimulus but you'd have to you'd have to take like the ego hit that day and lift less or do fewer reps and then psychologically you might

feel like you're you're not as good because last week you did 200 pounds and this week you only did 190 pounds or whatever yeah yeah well done i'm foolish to try to make any other point because Yeah. Well said. Well done. I'm going to fall back. I'm foolish to try to make any other point because he nailed them all. Yeah, he nailed them all. I was like, well. I do like the chin-ups specifically because if you're doing a pull-up palms away, by the time you get to the top, here you can still be externally rotated out the shoulder, but you're more likely to be more externally rotated if you actually turn your palms toward the bar

when it's overhead like that, with that supinated grip. And so you're in a better position overhead by being supinated because you're actually fully externally rotated overhead, which being overhead in an externally rotated position is always a more stable position for your shoulder. So another point on that.

As an example when i like prescribe just hanging from a bar as a mobility drill like it's better to have most people assuming their mobility is good enough to get into a semi-decent position but but grabbing with that that supinated grip palms toward and then just doing like a dead hang what's my biceps or two jack yeah but just doing a dead hang for time like hang on the bar for 30 seconds and do you know do six rounds of 30 seconds hanging from the bar with that with that chin up supinated grip um that really does a lot for improving your mobility um and more so than than doing just a regular palms forward youated grip. Yeah. I want to go back to opening up the CrossFit gym.

Sure. And how we started doing the kipping pull-up. And then everyone started doing the kipping pull-up and kind of abandoned the dead hang pull-up, the strict pull-up. There was a phase of that. And then a lot of people who couldn't do pull-ups started knocking them out, who couldn't do a dead hang. And then we discovered people's shoulders

are kind of getting jacked up from that. It's like you have people that can knock out. This happened a lot with women is knock out 10 kipping pull-ups. You ask them to do one strict, and they barely get an elbow bend. And so we actually discovered bands. So we're like, oh, we're just going to throw bands at this situation. At that point, it wasn't totally all over the place popular to scale with these bands, right? And so we actually discovered bands. So we're like, oh, we're just going to throw bands at this situation.

At that point, it wasn't totally all over the place popular to scale with these bands, right? Yeah, actually. It's kind of just emerging because now all of a sudden all these people are trying pull-ups. Well, being from Memphis, Juicy J let us know that bands will make her dance. That's right, yeah. So we're like, yeah, you got a good point, Juicy J. Well, Chris Moore, Chris was training in the gym and he's doing the West Side Styles, got the bands in there. And I was like, well, let's take some of these and use them for pull-ups. And this was before, like, Rogue was actually selling any of these bands.

And we started using them and playing around with them. And what I found was that offered a ton of instant gratification. Yeah, right there. People who couldn't do them otherwise, all of a sudden they got this big smile on their face. And it was good for a while, but what ended up happening is the bands actually caused a plateau. It's real easy at the bottom. It's hard at the top. People are kipping with the bands.

The same thing happened when people used bands for squats. The bands sliding off their foot, catching them right in the junk. It was fun to watch. You get used to being lighter or getting helped on one part, squats the band's sliding off their foot because what happens is the junk it was fun to watch you get used to being lighter or getting helped on one part and the other part you get used to feeling like you're doing all the work so like on the squat you got all this extra band on top and you go wow i'm squatting 400 because the band plus the weight and if you're getting at the bottom you're not really training down there and if you take the band off and you squat that 400 you get

kind of stuck it's the same thing we were seeing happening with pull-ups where people were going like yeah i'm feeling really confident now i feel like i'm doing like 20 of these right you take that band off and now you don't have the strength to initiate the pull-up ideally the band would match your actual strength curve so if you're doing a squat and you could squat 400 pounds for a single rep with no band maybe you really could you could squat 400 pounds through your sticking point but at the top you could squat 450 yeah and so adding a band that adds an extra 50 pounds at the top well now you're like at max tension throughout the entire lift not just through your sticking point and then it's extra light at the top so the original reason i have bands was that it adds to the part of the

lift that's a little bit heavier or that you're where you have better mechanical advantage and you're stronger but on the pull-up like if you're a person that can squat 400 pounds maybe you'll use a green band it's four or five hundred pounds you use a green band and so in that case we'll say the green band is just what i said and adds 50 pounds but you're not supposed to add a green band unless you can squat 400 pounds which means you're pretty strong yeah you've already done all that work right but you can't and this isn't a perfect example but you can't produce 400 pounds of force on a pull-up right but you're still using the same band we had which still has that same very large discrepancy from top to bottom so in that case maybe you you're using the band where at the bottom you know it's cutting off like that that 50 pounds which is like way too much because maybe at the bottom you're only like 10 pounds less strong than you are at the top so you're severely it's cutting off that 50 pounds, which is way too much, because maybe at the bottom you're only 10 pounds less strong than you are at the top.

Sometimes people just float. It's cutting off 50% of their body weight in some cases. You're severely undeveloping the bottom. And it's pulling your legs up. If your legs are pulled up and you're basically in a row position, you can guarantee that that's not going to fucking carry over to a pull-up, because the joint angle is not even the same in your shoulder like how could it be developing the same degree of strength it won't yeah right so so inevitably the problem is that you're way

under developing the part of the pull-up where you're at the bottom where the band's kicking a lot and then at the top a lot of times the band changes intention so much you'll see people where it's way too easy here then they get halfway done and they can't even finish it so it's way too easy and then it's way too hard and it just it just doesn't work very well overall i guess that case you're not getting anything done yeah so we use bands for a while and then we just kind of discover that people were it actually wasn't making people better at pull-ups it was just it was a good way to like make someone smile today oh i can do them you know it's the instant gratification so like now we're kind of like going okay bands can be a useful tool but you know there's probably a lot of other things we can

do for progression to get people to their first pull-up or to be able to break past three pull-ups or whatever it is and get them strong up to where they can do you know 20 kipping pull-ups safely well another thing is with people with the bands they just became dependent on them like they never wanted to transition out of it. It becomes a crutch, right? Yeah, it's the instant gratification thing. People are like, oh, it feels good now. So whoever wants to do the hard thing,

that doesn't happen very often. I think you've got to be really, really careful. I've been there in the past. If you're in the gym and you develop a dependency on a thing and you're scared to walk away from it, that is a big no-no in programming. If you've grown dependency on a thing and you're scared to walk away from it, that is a big no-no in programming. If you've grown dependent on one kind of tool, piece of equipment, piece of machinery,

and you can't just go to another gym now without that thing. Alex Maxwell, C4. Yeah, you've got to be quite careful if you don't feel like you can do what you need to do without this one thing you've grown too dependent on. Like if it was a belt, if it was knee wraps, if it was anything that when you got rid of it,

you felt like you weren't as prepared, that's a sign you you know when you've got that kind of problem in your program you feel weak really too weak you know it but you won't accept it you're like ah yeah i used to i used to be with front squats i didn't know how it was so so bad but you know i was like just trying to hide it like a skeleton in the closet for many years this is kind of like one of those issues you got to face get rid of the crutches yep so should we talk about how we fix that when we come back we're gonna take a break we come. So should we talk about how we fix that when we come back from our break? We're going to take a break. When we come back,

we're going to talk about how to program for it, progression, scaling, all that mess. And you'll have a nice V taper. Ooh. This is Tim Ferriss and you are listening

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And we're back. Talking to Doug and Chris. And Chris. About pull-ups. And we're going to be talking about progressions. And we're not going to be talking about just going from bands to no bands. But from the very beginning. Doug, where's your favorite place to start a newbie that has no ability to do a pull-up?

If you can't do a pull-up or a kipping pull-up at all, it's not the exact same movement pattern, but I still think the easiest way to get someone into some pulling movement and across the gym is just to have them start on ring rows. They're not the sexiest thing in the world, but I think they're they're really easy to teach they're really easy to to scale like you you could have anyone do ring rows like if your grandma comes in the gym she has no mobility and no strength she can still do ring rows in some capacity because you could do ring rows or like at the top of the movement you're damn near vertical and you could let go of the rings yeah you can change the angle throughout the movement to make it more difficult or easy i mean it it it's hard

to measure uh how you did last time versus this time if you're always moving your feet but you could you could mark where your feet were last time and keep track of that so if i'm that person when do i know when to start going and practicing a pull-up i've been ring rowing well i mean you won't you won't just like automatically know okay i am ready and i am cutting it off full like full stop no more ring rows and i'm moving on to pull-ups full time it'll be more of like okay i feel like i'm making some progress go try it out see what happens and then if you do really well then you can start doing some pull-ups if you don't then you probably want to stick on your ring row so it'll be like a uh not necessarily a trial and error thing but just like a somewhere you just test retest that type

of thing where you don't graduate all at once right so yeah yes i couldn't do it today i got 10 in a row and you wouldn't go straight to pull-ups anyhow like we're talking about progressions right now you wouldn't just straight jump to to a kipping pull-up from a ring row like you would go from from a ring row to something you could do some banded stuff we're not 100 saying you should never ever do that so you could do some banded stuff but you probably want to couple that with you know chin over the bar holds and or eccentric pull-ups um or if you if you do have access to you know something like like a cable machine or a lat pull down or a gravitron or something like that something where you're just

working the same movement pattern you're doing a vertical pull but you're just doing it with less than your body weight then that's that's pretty ideal mike you're a big fan of the isometric holds right yeah big way of assuring up grip and arm strength actually uh for the the static holds uh i really like those especially for joint health too so anytime my elbows or shoulders start feeling beat up the static holes are like a great way to build up strength without beating down your your joints so much and then additionally if uh someone can't do the static hold like due to mobility it's extremely obvious if they're at the top and they're trying to hold a movement if if they're having if they're in bad position a lot of times it's hard to spot bad positions

when someone's moving, but they're going to stop and hold it for a second and go, oh man, we could probably do this, this, or this. I like to try and get my chin over the vertical plane. So instead of just being above the bar, actually kind of pulling it close and actually kind of allows you to like, force you to kind of pull your shoulders back a little bit.

Yeah, I like to, for this specific thing, I like to start with the bar, you know, kind of just like the height of that bar. It's already chest height. That way you can walk over there, you know, put yourself, if you want to be super native, you can be like this or you can be regular pull-up style. But you can just pull yourself into this perfect position and then you can pick your feet up and your job is just to not move at all. That way you don't have to pull yourself into the position. You can just start in that perfect position and then pick up one leg, get on your toe, or maybe pick up both legs and see how long you can stay there in that absolutely perfect position. And if you find yourself, you know, falling out of it or going like this or whatever,

then you know, you're just not strong enough to do that, that specific thing quite yet, because you can't do it at all with good technique. But if you're doing it where you're starting with the bar at chest height and you can just stand there and be in a perfect position first, it makes it way easier to not screw it up because you know for a fact you can get into the position. You're just not strong enough to hold the position. Hey, before we go too much further, I want to make a distinction between what we're recommending people doing.

So if people are crossfitting and they're trying to get up and say they don't have a pull-up or a kipping pull-up and we're trying to get them there, what we recommend them substituting, if kip-up is in your Metcon and your WOD, we recommend them substituting that for X. And then we also think that they should be doing some sort of strength work towards getting a pull-up. So for conditioning in a conditioning session where you're doing things for time, static holds don't really work out because you want to do

a certain amount of reps. I'm a big fan of ring rows and then also banded pull-ups are okay, but you just don't want to do them every time. So if you want to knock out reps and be a part of the action, then you can do it there. I like to alternate between, say, ring rows and banded pull-ups or something like that. But if you find yourself always doing the banded thing, then you're probably screwing that up a little bit. So during a conditioning session, I like to try to alternate those movements where it's a dynamic thing.

During the strength work, I think that's a great opportunity to do the static holds. I think you should be able to hold a static hold with your hands facing you for like 30 seconds. If you can do that, now it's time to turn the hands around and do 30 seconds here and then start doing some eccentric stuff. But if you can't hold your chin over the bar for 30 seconds, you probably don't have a lot of business trying to do any kipping pull-ups. And I think you'll also find if you can get to that 30-second point where you can hold your chin over the bar, dead hang pull-ups, the strict pull-up, is going to get a lot easier. That's how you'll bridge the gap from the band and newbie position to being able to transition to actual pull-ups.

Yeah, and I think the progression is really good for new people. Kind of like what Doug was talking about. You have ring rows, and then you have your chin over bar or hold with your hands facing you, then chin on the bar away from you, and then you do eccentric, and then you move on. And you can do that in a linear fashion and go, okay, once I hit 30 seconds, I like to hit 60 seconds. It kind of depends.

Hit those numbers and then move on to the next thing if you're somebody who's kind of hit a plateau though um it's something you probably want to add more variety to so if you're kind of like oh i really just can't get past this point okay maybe it's good to like change up the movement progression just for the sake of variety what time would you pick for the eccentric portion so let's say you you can hold yourself for 30 seconds now you're going to lower yourself for amount of time what would you say five seconds or so if you could control it or what would you say just like a two or three seconds yeah and then work up and then and then kind of try to increase that amount of time uh that you spend i wouldn't you know i don't think it's necessary to

go over five just after you hit like five seconds just add more repetitions at that point uh one thing i would note with the eccentric pull-ups and that that eccentric just means that the muscle is lengthening under tension. That means that you're starting with your chin over the bar and you're going down as slowly as you can or for a set amount of time. Or then just climbing back up or having a buddy boost you back up to the top position. The trick here is to not do too many. Because eccentric loading is the best way to tear a muscle up, get very sore. Anytime you've ever heard of anyone getting rhabdo,

it's because of a lot of repetitions, a lot of eccentric loading, a lot of tearing of the muscle. So if you want to tear the muscle, that's a great way to do it. So just be careful with that. If you do, I think, any more than 25 total eccentric pull-ups, you're probably going to get really freaking sore. So it only exceeds like 5 sets of a lever.

That seems like a lot. That's at the tippy top. You would never want to do more than that. That'd be like 5 sets of 5. 5 sets of 5 eccentric pull-ups. That is a lot. You probably want to do 3 sets of 3. 2 seconds. That's where you kind of want to start and you want to do like three sets of three. That's what I was thinking. Two seconds.

That's where you kind of want to start and you want to build up over time. Think about if you could only deadlift 350 pounds and so you want to deadlift 400 pounds. Would you ever load up 400 pounds like on blocks or something like that, pick it up, and then lower it slowly for 25 reps with like 400 pounds. No, you would never ever do that. You, you would never do this. I can't believe you mentioned that.

Now someone's going to do it. You could do it. We are warning you. You should know that's a bad idea before you try it. But it's a terrible idea to do day in and day out for a long time. That's what people do with upper body stuff all the time. Like they can't do a single pull up. And so they go do a

bunch of really heavy eccentrics like really heavy just means doing it with body weight it's like it's over your max yeah so like with with the deadlift that's exactly what i said if you're going down to 350 you put 400 pounds on the bar pulled off a block step back and then do a very slow eccentric all the way to the ground you would never do even doing a single like that is a stupid idea on something like a deadlift or a squat or like a big leg exercise but we do it with upper body stuff all the time yeah it's just as hard on our upper body joints as it would be on our lower body joints but for some reason we just we just view it differently so where people fall or they get into trouble isn't necessarily from doing too many eccentrics from it's from doing jumping pull-ups and then accidentally doing an eccentric

by doing a controlled uh deceleration towards the bottom and they end up getting rabbed so that's that's the the big trouble with with pull-ups is the the jumping pull-up yeah so from like a programming perspective we're talking about the progressions we're talking about different movements that you can throw in for that but from from programming so like if you're planning out your week you're planning out your month how the training is going to go, if you can't do pull-ups, I don't see doing it more than two or three times a week. Three times in a week would be kind of pushing it.

A couple times a week, doing pull-ups, but also make sure that you're throwing in that horizontal rowing. So you may do three sets of three of the eccentric pull-ups or some static holds, but also do some horizontal pulling in there, as well as you can strengthen those muscles. But again, like Doug was saying, you're not maxing out. Would you keep a one-to-one ratio of horizontal to vertical? And the same thing for press. Do military press, also do a horizontal press.

Yeah. I think you can't go wrong with that strategy. Just keep a little bank account in your mind. I did that one time, now I've got to do it this time, the next time. Yeah, and if you're keeping everything down on paper, it's easy to keep up with. If you're brand new and you don't have any issues yet, then one-to-one is perfect. If you already have an achy shoulder and you've already been trying to do kipping pull-ups for a year

and you've already been doing cross-ups for a year and you've been doing so much overhead stuff, then it's okay to do more than one-to-one where you're doing maybe two-to-one, two horizontal pulls. I'd say take 12 weeks and just do horizontal only. Yeah, you could just nix the overhead stuff for a while and just do bent rows and seated rows and one-arm dumbbell rows. Yeah, you need that stuff more often. It's not like one-arm rows aren't going to beat you up too bad. You can do that several times. It won't beat you up like a pull-up could.

I've never heard of anyone hurting their shoulder from doing too many barbell rows. Yeah. But pull-ups, all the time. That's a good point about injury. So I'm in a particular situation where I'm a little bit heavier. Gravity rides me a little bit harder. You said work on it two to three days a week. Would you change anything about that progression or the frequency

for somebody who's a bigger athlete? Let's say there's a 250-pound guy out there who's into CrossFit, but obviously is going to struggle with the pull-ups. If they practice a lot, they could just get some overused things. How would you change it for a big man or a big lady? I'm not sure I would change much of anything. For that person, it's going to require more patience so they for them it's more about they're going to have to have a different mindset now when the guy when when they're when you're working out with somebody who's 100 pounds lighter like the thing is you got to change the expectations

people's expectations are like oh i got to be able to do what the rest of the class is doing but you got to be realistic about where you're starting from. Is it a flip-flop of if you're a skinny, undersized person, you see the biggest guy in your crossfit gym, he's squatting 500 for three, and now you squat 200 for one. This is a gigantic gap. It's like being 5'5 and mad that you can't slam a basketball. It's like, no, you just weren't made for that. The guy that's 7' can just kind of get on his tippy toes and pop it in it's like you just got to realize some people some people

are going to excel at rowing you know you got a nice long person they're going to row but they're not going to be able to squat same thing with pull-ups you know a bigger guy or girl is just going to have a hard time but there's going to be another that's what's beautiful about something like crossfit is you're not going to be great at everything. Everyone is humbled at some point. A lot of people are humbled in the pull-ups. It's okay to suck at something, right? Or you might be humbled in the squat or the deadlift or something like that. So everyone's going to be humbled somewhere.

And for a lot of people, that is the pull-ups. And you just have to have the proper expectations set up in order to be successful because I think people get discouraged so fast when they are bigger and they need to just say, hey hey I need to enjoy the process here and it's going to take me a lot longer patience is a good word yeah I forgot the other point I was going to make also if you're 250 just you're gonna have to maybe face the fact that you can lose some weight I know you maybe enjoy being very muscular and strongest guy in your box but if pull-ups are something you value getting down to 220 it'd be a hell of a lot easier

on your pull-ups, right? Yeah, and someone like yourself, like you've got an athletic history, your joints are beat up. To say the least. Yeah, the static holes are great for that. So they're not going to beat up your joints and they're going to make you really strong

in the most difficult positions, which is probably kind of at the top. So I think two things that you could do is scap pull-ups, where you get on the bar and you just do the shoulders, and then static holds too. If you combine those two things, you kind of get in the bottom and the top. You're not beating up your joints too much. I think you'll find if you do that for a few months,

that your joints actually start feeling really good, and then putting forth an effort to do a full pull-up or maybe even a kip won't be as damaging. Did you hear that, my big brothers? There is hope for us.

All we need is a little patience and tough hands. Yeah, you can also do modified rope climbs too if you want some variety. I am terrified of that. That's one thing

I didn't even try in the Spartan race, by the way. I didn't even try and I walked away. I've seen Doug do it. He just kind of leans back. Oh, modified rep part.

Yeah, I do my warm-ups all the time. Well, you know, I've got a battle rope with it. I might try that, Doug. It's a good idea. It's like tied to the top of the power rack and just kind of pull yourself off the ground with it? Yeah, you kind of just leave your feet in one spot and then you just start here

and you just kind of roll back until you're all the way laying down and then you basically just pull yourself back up, and your body's kind of just laying down and standing up. You know, as much as I hate to admit it, if I started doing that and I learned how to lock the rope with my feet, I got comfortable squeezing, got over the fear of rope climbs, probably I even could climb the rope at that frigging gym.

I should get the camera out. Let's see if I can do it, man. Yeah, let's try it. Let's see. We're going to talk about a different type of person, someone who can string a few, is few kipping pull-ups together. Yeah, if you can already string a few kipping pull-ups together, that probably means you can do one pull-up, I'm assuming.

This kind of goes for everyone, but especially for this person. At that point, still, if you can only do a few together, still your limiter is pull-up strength, like strict pull-up strength. So the vast majority of your training for the pull-ups is still be strength based. It still should be, you know, doing, you know, five sets of triples at four strict pull-ups or L pull-ups, or, you know, if you're a little stronger, maybe do five sets of five, maybe you add a chain around your neck or you, or you do a weighted pull-up for you to get to the point where you can do, you know, 50 kipping pull-ups to the point where you can do 50 kipping pull-ups unbroken,

everyone that can do 50 kipping pull-ups unbroken, those people can do a strict pull-up with half their body weight hanging from them. And they can do 20 strict pull-ups straight through, yeah. Right. So it comes down to raw strength in that case. If your one rep max on pull-ups is higher, then you can do more reps with your body weight because if you can do, you know, if your one rep max on pull-ups is higher, then you can do more reps with your body weight. Cause if I can do, I'm 200 pounds. If I can do a pull up with a hundred pounds hanging from me, then really just a body weight pull up at that point is, you know, 66% of my max. And with 66% of, of anything where you're, where you're lifting at that light of a percentage, if I'm doing a, you know, bench press and I'm, and I'm doing 66%, well, I can probably do, you know, 15 reps with

that weight because it's such a light percentage compared to my max. So if you can only do a few kipping pull-ups and only one strict pull-up, then you just need to increase your max, just like you would on a squat. If you, if your max on squat was 300 pounds and you're trying to do max reps with 290, well, the answer isn't to practice with 290 more. The answer is to get your squat to 500 and then 290 is so easy you can do a lot of reps with it. So raw strength is still the key. Yeah, in addition to the raw strength, you should be working on the raw strength. You should be working on being able to do more weight with pull-ups or more like strict pull-ups.

And that is going to definitely help your kipping pull-ups. But the other thing too is learning to kip better and having a stronger core. So I see a lot of people, this happens a lot, more often than not. People, their kip like between one and three looks different. Like every kip is starting, it's like their mechanics are falling apart as they're going. And some of that is upper body strength and some of it is core strength. So a lot of things you should be warming up before you do kipping pullups. You should be warming up with hollow rocks and arch body rocks.

So you should be kind of learning how to completely activate your core and getting in a hollow position. And then also an arch position because that's what's going to be happening. So get really strong in the arch position. Get really strong in the hollow position and then also an arch position because that's what's going to be happening. So get really strong in the arch position. Get really strong in the hollow position. You should be able to hold each position for 60 seconds. You should be able to run through 30 rocks for arch and 30 rocks for hollow body. And that is actually like if the kipping part is the hard part. So I know some people, they can do a lot of pull-ups, but they, they fall out of rhythm.

And part of that is they just don't have that, that movement pattern built up. Um, and I also like to do arch to hollow rolls, you know, just rolling from one to the other, just kind of around keeping your feet and your hands together. Uh, so doing that in your warmup before you do kipping pull-ups can help teach your body to like activate the right muscles in the right way. Uh, and then the other thing I like to do for people who want to learn how to kip better Kipping pull-ups can help teach your body to activate the right muscles in the right way. And then the other thing I like to do for people who want to learn how to kip better is don't do a pull-up. Just do a kip, but put a towel between your feet.

So throw a towel between your feet. A lot of times you'll watch people when they're doing kipping pull-ups and their feet are coming apart. What's happening is they can no longer get any more range of motion at their feet. What they're trying to do when you kip is you're trying to get that arch, and you're going to close into that hollow position. In an attempt to get more arch, they're letting their feet come apart, and they're going out. What's happening is they're losing all that torque here at the core,

and it's just kind of dissipating out their feet. If you can learn to keep your feet together, toes pointed pointed and that's where the towel comes in really handy throw that towel in there it's going to force you to keep your feet together and just practice going from arch to hollow arch to hollow on the bar keeping those shoulders active and you're going to get really strong kipping motion so yeah as doug was saying make sure your upper body is your pulling muscles are very strong you're going through the proper progressions for those pulls, but also make sure that your kip is on point because so much energy is lost in bad kipping that you're probably leaving quite a few, uh, quite a few pull-ups on the table during a WOD if your feet are coming apart. I've gone as far as tied people's feet together. Um, but the towel is a much safer way

and it teaches you versus forces you. So do the towel. Do not do what I've done in the past. The towel is a much better tool. Did you hog tie it on the go? I shepherded about it. I tied him up. It sounds like one of the most important things is being consistent between

reps. If each rep is a little bit different, you'll never get the skill down of how to do it better. If you watch the people who have the best pull-up, anything, you watch anyone in CrossFit, the people who end up, they're the ones that are further along in the workout, like five minutes in, they're ahead. It's because every rep was the same as they went on. We watched a little bit at regionals this past weekend. The person who had the best technique on the treadmill,

like you could watch them and you're like, oh man, her technique is right on point. Well, it's funny she also finished, even if her overhead squat wasn't the best, she would get done with the overhead squats first. And that was because she wasn't totally smoked from the run. The most amazing example I've seen all year was James doing those 150 wall balls. Each one looked exactly the same.

They were all unbroken. That was James Hobart, right? Oh, yeah. He was at the Richard's mustard seed competition. He did them. They were all exactly the same, even down to the subtle little flick of the wrist to get the right spin on it. So when I see these guys who are really excelling at everything, the pull-ups, the squats,

rep to rep, they're trying to be as consistent as possible. That probably starts by being very consistent in everything, starting in the gym. Yeah. The last person we want to kind of talk about, I guess, is the person who they can get one pull-up. They've kind of done that. And I be willing to bet that if you only have one pull-up,

you love doing that one pull-up. Look at me. Look what I did. Yeah, but what you may need to do is kind of pull it back and do some of those progression things you know go back and do uh the uh the ring rows during the workout during a metcon make sure you're doing the static holds doing the eccentric stuff that's what's going to get you from one to five to ten uh doing one every day is not going to get you there again

we we did kind of cover you know two to three times. Make sure you've got a one-to-one ratio of horizontal to vertical pulling. CTP. I was going to say, those are all things that, until you master the pull-up, those are things you can do now to fill up the space to be working on these skills. Yeah, it's not even...

They're not minor. They're what you can do. It's what's going to help you get to the next level. This is what's funny is I can probably, if you give me a bar I can do kipping pull-ups i would knock out somewhere between 20 and 30 but the majority of my training for pull-ups is still static holds it's rope climbs it's it's uh i still work on my kipping uh these are all things that like the the more i do the more i understand the fundamentals is where i'm going to see the biggest improvement. Let's say it's less like graduation, more

like even if you were strong enough to squat a thousand pounds, you would still start by warming up with just an empty bar. You need to always work those fundamentals. Alright, CTP, we have some questions that were submitted via the Instagrams. Yep, I got them all on a sheet of paper since my phone is now pleasantly

cracked. This is very exciting. Who knows what we asked here. All right, so yeah, follow us on Instagram at BarbellStruckPodcast. We're going to be asking you guys to ask us more questions

in the future. The first one comes from at Buffkin78. What's up, Buffkin78? He's 6'5", 255 pounds. Can you help a big man out? Oh, we kind of talked about that. Yeah.

You didn't know that before you made fun of him just now. We already helped him. We talked about it. Yeah, we said basically the progression is going to be the same. You need to really focus on holds at the top right, and then what was the other thing? Control of descents. Yeah, and just I was saying scat pull-ups.

Scat pull-ups. Yeah, that was the other thing. That's where your elbows don't bend. You're just doing as much as you can from the shoulders. It's going to look kind of like this. He might be buff and 250 and absolutely shredded, but if you're not, if you can do 225, bro, that will help. That will help.

Yeah, so keep the variety high. The longer you've been training, the more variety you're going to need to get progress, but if you haven't been training that long, just the simple linear progression is going to be great for you. Okay. Geotheo33 says... I love these names, man. They're getting awesome.

Thumb over the bar or under the bar? Thumb around the bar. Around the bar. That would be a full grip, and that's probably the best grip. I suppose that's what he means by under the bar. But yeah, definitely put your thumb all the way around the bar that would be a full grip and that's probably the best i suppose that's what he means by under the bar but yeah definitely definitely put your thumb all the way around the bar like hanging over the bar like that you just you just don't get the same the same grip on the bar number one that usually people do that because of a lack of grip strength and then number

two if we're talking about shoulder health actually having a full grip on the bar and being able to actually squeeze the bar you'll get better rotator cuff activation in your shoulders as well so you have a more stable shoulder because you're actually able to grip the bar fully. Man, I did not know that. True story. Thanks, man. I don't know where all the grip thumb around. I remember like in high school when guys would bench press.

No, bro, if you put it around the bar, you had like 15 pounds, you'd bench. I don't know if that's ever been rooted in anything real or not, or if it just feels better for some people. I know on a press, gripping the bar can help you out because you can get more activation throughout the arms. Yeah, you need to get your thumb around and squeeze the bar. Additionally, I've seen people not wrap their thumb around. I've seen this with my own eyes, and they have flown off the bar.

Seen it. And landed on their head. Oh, gee. And I've heard stories of people having like pretty much coming pretty close to death, like having surgeries. This is a pretty big deal. We saw that mustard seed. Wrap that thumb around.

Yeah, you don't want to fly off and smack the back. Nothing's worse than having to stand up and try to look cool. It's like Gallagher at a display. It's like smashing watermelons. It's like a bad sound they hear on concert. Stop. Yeah, you don't want that to be you. Yeah.

All right, Nutmeg15. Nice. I'm a spice person from Minneapolis. I want to get in shape. Bottom is my weakest point. How do I get it stronger? Quit using bands. Yeah.

We talked about that. Using the band under-trains the bottom position. Because the band is offering the most assistance at the bottom, so you're under-training it. I think the scap pull-ups are good, too. And then scap rows. I like to, a lot of times in warm-ups, get a dumbbell and then just kind of get that scap row going as well. Boom.

There you go. Let's see. Mini McIntosh. He or she wants to know advice for improving grip strength. Hands are the first thing to go when they're doing pull-ups. Those holds will do it, right, Mike? Those static holds at the top? I think the best thing for grip strength for pulling is ropes.

If you can climb a rope, no legs, your grip is the last thing on your mind. I have noticed some athletes, this will transfer over, and some it won't. So during a pull-up workout, if you're doing a pull-up workout, immediately after the workout for a cool-down, do some farmer's carries. So get some farmer's carries, go. It's going to be very taxing on your grip. For some athletes, it carries over, and I've seen for some athletes, they do the farmer's carry, and it's like gripping here isn't the same as gripping here.

And so it just kind of – there's a lot of variables there we could go into. But, like, after a pull-up workout, go do some farmer's carry here and so it just kind of there's a lot of variables there we could go into but like uh that i after a pull-up workout go do some farmer's carry or do some um do some pause deadlifts so get do some deadlifts where you're pausing at the top and then just kind of go double overhand on that and and then work on your deadlift form but when you get to the top do like a five second pause at the top so that's going to be a little little more like doing a pull-up than, say, a farmer's carry, too. And that rope drill that, Doug, you mentioned that I would probably get a benefit out of, just kind of walking it up, not doing a full rope climb.

If you lack the strength in your hands, that would be a good way to introduce it. It's your point, Mike. I think just being aware that your grip is weak and you need to enforce it. So every time you grab anything, if you just pay attention to what you're grabbing and put a little extra emphasis, don't drop deadlifts or anything prematurely. Don't be sloppy and rush those reps. I think you'll see a lot of improvement just by being aware that you need to improve. One thing that I've noticed is as I do more gymnastics and more weightlifting, and I've had a point in time where I didn't do as much kettlebells,

I noticed my grip strength started going down because every time I was lifting a bar, I was either alternating my grip using a hook grip and the gymnastic stuff, the strength stuff, I wasn't doing a lot of high repetition. And so I almost have to throw kettlebells into my training, just doing snatches and farmer's carry, anything where you're gripping and ripping that, that kettlebell is going to build up a lot of grip strength as well. I got a lot of new calisthenics on my hands just for one month of heavy kettlebell work, man. Kettlebells will really, you feel like your forearms and hands are just sort of upgraded.

Absolutely. It's very good, too, if you suffer in a deadlift. It'll add weight to your deadlift because your hands and arms are tougher. Well, this is how to pimp your pull-ups. So another thing, obviously, is you just get your pimp game better. You manage your hose on a regular basis. Your pimp hand will be much stronger, and you should probably have a better grip. I think there's no argument there.

More of an attitude type thing. All right, Charles Lifts. Oh, hell yeah. He's Charles Lifts, not Charles Lifts 256. He got it. He's the first Charles Lifts. Best lat engagement drills, exercises to help with pull-ups and or when, how to incorporate them into your

pull-up training so how to basically recruit the muscles in the right sequence like you were saying about how your rhomboids whatnot were sort of firing out as soon as compared to your traps i mean i think the chin over bar holds are a great engagement like if you can already do pull-ups and you're just looking to warm up and get some type of lat engagement whatever that means that's not really something most people need to do for the most part like most people lack lat engagement it's usually some other muscles in the back that are having a hard time getting activated i don't know it's that's not usually the problem like if it's a lack of lat engagement usually it means it's your lats aren't very strong it's not not an engagement issue it's not like your lats won't fire they're just not

very strong so like usually when people talk about engagement issues like your lats won't fire they're just not very strong so like usually when people talk about engagement issues like around the shoulder they might talk about like like serratus anterior engagement or lower trap engagement sometimes rhomboid engagement like lat engagement doesn't seem to be as big of a problem so i can't i can't say specifically why he's asking for that but but to answer the question i still think doing like a chin-over-bar hold as a party warm-up drill for lat engagement is a very good thing to do for that specifically. Yeah. There you go. And final, ooh, Bacon Assassin.

At Bacon Assassin. That's a good name. To Kip or not to Kip for overall pull-up improvement? And then Butterfly or no? Some big questions. Yeah. I think, I don't know what I think about that, to be honest. I'm just kidding.

The kipping pull-up, like, again, I think Doug was saying this during the break. I don't know if you actually said it on the microphone yet, but the majority of your pull-ups should be done in a strength fashion, strict. And kipping pull-ups should just be something that's done sometimes so like the majority of your pull-ups are are kipping that's a big no-no um and you're probably not going to see a lot of improvement from just that we went over a ton of variety on how to conduct pull-ups i think the more variety you have the more benefits you're going to get in that kip additionally there's things you can do to improve it uh like we're talking about the progressions but also working on getting in the hollow position,

getting in arch position, and kind of working on that drill with the towel I talked about. So it seems like once you get the kipping form, you can kind of just keep it polished. But it's all the small stuff that will keep you to continuously sort of polish up that form, like the ab drills. Yeah, doing more of the same

is not always going to make you better at that thing. What was the right was that the whole butterfly or no oh the butterfly um i like butterfly a lot uh but i think that if you need to be uh in order to do butterfly you should be able to do like a dead hang pull-up with half your body weight hanging around your waist uh the the danger of the butterfly pull-up is just there's so much eccentric motion going on there or eccentric loading. It's almost all eccentric. You're getting a lot of power from the hips, and then you're coming through, and you're having to control and slow down.

So there's a lot of muscles around your shoulders that are getting worked very, very heavily. If you're very, very strong, it's going to be great. You're going to move fast. It's not going to be as taxing. If you're not very strong, it's going to be great. You're going to move fast. It's not going to be as taxing. If you're not very strong, it's going to really screw you up. I feel like there's this tipping point with butterfly pull-ups.

If you're not great at pull-ups, it's going to totally screw you up. If you're very, very strong and you're pretty light too, then they're going to feel beautiful for you. You're going to notice if you do butterfly pull-ups, maybe introduce them in small doses. Do five one day 10 the next day and kind of build them over time and then really think

about like the next day you know one to two days later kind of do an analysis of like how do my shoulder blades feel like how do the muscles all throughout my shoulders feel they feel like they got unusually sore or beat up all right that might be a flag that something's going on there additionally like people make the same mistake with a butterfly as they do the kipping, their feet are going all over the place, their technique's not very good, and they're putting a lot of stress on their shoulders that could otherwise be put on, say, their hips or something like that. So the butterfly, to me, that's an advanced movement, and it can be a lot of fun, and honestly, it actually feels better on my shoulders than just regular kipping

because the range of motion is actually shorter. But you need to be pretty strong for body weight to pull that off. The nice thing about butterfly pull-ups is that you can practice them using a partial range of motion where you're not actually getting your chin over the bar. And you can just do a very small butterfly where you're kind of just doing this cyclical pattern where you can work the pattern. You can work the technique without having to do the full movement, which means it's going to be way easier on your shoulders. But you still can keep the rhythm very top of mind. a metcon where you're actually doing it as a as a tester or in a competition you've you've practiced the cyclical pattern many many times without actually having to put that much stress

on your shoulder that way you can do the majority of your overhead work again in more of a strict fashion but you can still practice the rhythm consistently where you don't kind of lose it or forget about it yeah the rhythm's the the hardest part of the butterfly pull-up really i i actually i can knock out more of those in a row than just kipping. And that's probably because my grip is my limiter. Again, for butterfly or kipping, if you can only do two or three in a row, practicing doing more is not the best way to do more. You already know how to do it.

The reason you can only do two or three in a row is a lack of strength, not because you don't know how to do it. So spend most of your time getting stronger, and then all of a sudden you'll be able to do 10 or 20 in a row. That's why people that have never done butterfly pull-ups ever, but they have good mobility and they have strong enough pulling strength where the first time they ever try it, they can do 20 or 30 in a row. I know many people like that, that they're just like, oh, like this,

and they can just do it because they're strong and they're mobile, not because they had to figure out how to do it. If you're strong enough, then it just kind of makes sense. It's easy. And I give anyone permission if you see some guy at your gym doing butterfly pull-ups, very shaky, you have my full approval to walk over to him and be like, get your caterpillar ass back on the fucking band. Have an ad.

Well, there you go. On that note, I think we'll Close the show down Make sure to go to BarbellStruck.com Sign up for the newsletter And we'll see you next week