Getting More Mileage From Pull-Ups
Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
If you have done pull-ups for a while, they probably aren’t difficult enough anymore to be useful to you. That is, if you don’t use a simple trick to make them a tad more difficult.
So You Mastered The Pull-Up
If you are among those reading this, then you probably already are pretty good at pull-ups, meaning you can do 12 each in three sets.
Should you now continue doing them as usual, you’ll slowly enter the land of training endurance and that means you won’t induce muscle growth. But with a bit of luggage you can make pull-ups much more challenging again:
Go Light
Once more, you don’t need to drop an awful lot of weight into the rucksack to have enough resistance to work against. Even a 2 or 4 lb (1 – 2 kg) plate can make a difference. Go for the weight where you can do at least six and no more than 12 repetitions. When you once again reach 3×12, up the weight another little bit.
The backpack trick, by the way, also works quite nicely for doing negative pull-ups!
Tags: back exercise, bodybuilding, fitness, pull-ups, video, workout
4 Comments
OMG – if I ever get to the point where I need to add weight for pull-ups I will be HAPPY!!! I’m lucky to eek out a few pull-ups with just my own body weight.
You will get there. In my experience there is a point where it seems you are stuck at x number of reps, but then it continues.
I’ve done this with a vest and weights in the side pockets. I was surprised at how little added weight was needed to make the exercise harder!
Same for me! I started adding weight *very* enthusiastically with a 10 kg plate 😀