Pull-Up improvements.

[MilkTruckCoPilot]

Don't kip....

Progress to doing weighted pullups, 3x5 once a week.

Set up:

Once you grab the bar, attempt to bend it.

Do an ANTI-SHRUG... shoulder blades retracted and pulled down with your lats and pecs.

Once you combine both of these steps your shoulders will roll down and you will find yourself going from a sagging body position to a position of 2 o'clock and 8 o'clock with your head being at the 2 o'clock if somebody was viewing you from the side. I want your stomach tight as if somebody was going to punch it. We're creating a spring throughout the body.

When you lower yourself down DO NOT...DO NOT let this tension leave your body and DON'T let your shoulders come out of the socket. This will cause you to stop a few inches shorter then what you are used to if you were relaxing and getting the stretch at the bottom. Be explosive but BE TIGHT. Remember what I said about the spring, you can't push a rope.

Don't rush through the reps, be precise.

Practice this with just your bodyweight at first and let me know how it goes. TAKE AS MUCH TIME AS NEEDED BETWEEN SETS. We are focusing on strength here, not conditioning in an aerobic/anaerobic sense. We want to be fresh for each set because practice doesn't make perfect. PERFECT PRACTICE makes perfect.

Hope this helps.

 

[JBS]

If you're sincerely stuck at a plateau for 4 months, you're doing something wrong. See if you can get someone to watch what you are doing and critique you. There's no reason why you should be still doing 18 pull ups after 4 months if you were doing 17 to 18 pull ups 4 months ago. Did I read that right?

You can also try other excercises to stimulate the muscle groups to grow. For example, lat pulldowns. If you have any joint issues, I would NOT recommend behind the neck and even if you don't, I wouldn't go heavy behind the neck.

Also, if you are stagnant, look again at your diet habits and rest patterns. It's not the exercise itself that increases your strength and capacity to do work, but rather the rest and nutrition afforded to the muscle group immediately following the workout that allows the body to adapt to the stimulus. Since your goal is to increase the number of reps, I would alternate between higher reps on the seated lat pulldowns one week and heavy weight low reps the following week. Work wide on the bar to work the large muscle groups in the back and lats and work narrow on the bar palms in to focus on the biceps. Hell, you're stagnant for 4 months. I would do old school standing bicep curls and standing pully curls as well as spider and preacher curls on a dedicated arm day once per week as well... anything to break the monotony. You need to shock your body into responding.

4 months of being plateaued is a LONG time. Re-look at everything, preferably with the help of someone who can watch you either in person or else on video from a good angle. And don't neglect the proper amount of rest for the muscle groups if you are trying to do max pull ups every single day, for example (I hope you are not doing that).

Last thing I would say is that push ups aren't going to help with pull ups, but strict dips on a set of parallel bars or a dip stand in a gym WILL work some of the muscles involved in doing pull ups.

 

[SkrewzLoose]

I'd be happy being "stuck" at 18 pull ups for the rest of my life.
Some good advice in the previous 2 posts. Especially the "don't kip" part.

 

[Fucci26]

My recruiter has had me doing dips for awhile. I did them a lot when I was younger, but they have expanded my speed in pull-ups. I used to have to really take it slow and focus, now everything after 18 repetitions is either a kip or a half-assed attempt. I'm thinking my best bet is just to take some of the advice given in here, like doing alternate versions of pull-ups. I've only been doing dead-hang, until I started reading Muscle and Fitness, I didn't know there was other types. I'd like to be doing 30 pull-ups before I leave for boot. Long shot, but worth it.

 

[Soldado]

I've done this program and it has helped me: http://50pullups.com/. Now I'm above 18 pull-ups.

 

[Etype]

I picked this up from a Jim Wendler video and it helped out quite a bit, set a running clock and do 4 pull ups every 30 seconds- do it wide, medium close supinqted then pronated. After you get through the whole thing (3 sets supinated, 3 pronated, 24 total) take a 1 or 3 minute break then run through it again if you can- for a total of 48 pull ups. I worked that in once a week and did bigger sets or pull ups in some sort of circuit another day of the week. After a couple weeks I did 5 per set which put me up to a total of 60, then up to 6, etc.

It was something different, and sometimes that's all you need.

 

[Ooh-Rah]

Here is something to aspire to!

http://www.dump.com/amazingman/

 

[Soldado]

I've done this program and it has helped me: http://50pullups.com/. Now I'm above 18 pull-ups.

I was in 22 pull-ups thanks to this :). I was busy this week but after all today I took a pull ups test myself and I did 16 . Hope this information helps.

 

[POG Reservist]

For what it's worth I never broke over 20 until I started doing more oly and power lifts. There's a lot of subjective parts to pull-up weakness. Mine is almost always grip because I weigh more than most Marines. I end up having to shoot hands from the bar to keep resetting. Everyone else's advice is good. Remember you'll only make so many gains using your own body weight, you'll either have to increase the weight your pulling or lose weight which is not always productive. Hang cleans work the same muscle groups and increase your speed that you do each rep. Gravity is working against you so speed is your friend. Power lifters attack their weaknesses on each lift, if you your having problems stabilizing the bar in a straight line your shoulders are weaker relative to the rest of your muscles. The same applies to pull-ups, your lats are involved in the beginning of the rep, if your stuck in the middle strengthen your biceps, if you're having lockout problems it's probably grip. Also experiment doing max sets with different grips, just give yourself a few days to recover. When your event comes up do the grip you can do the most with. A lot of it is body composition, I am an ectomorph, the only plus side is a short torso makes your lays bigger so I do better with close grip pull-ups because of my stronger back muscles.

 

[POG Reservist]

Sorry a few typos, I was referring to benching in a bar in a straight line and "lats" not "lays" in the end.