Towel Pull-Ups
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You do pull-ups, you do chin-ups, but have you done towel pull-ups? They are mixture of both and a great way to exercise the muscles in your forearms and hands.
Bigger Forearms, Stronger Handshake
The hand position of a towel pull-up is a mixture between the pull-up and chin-up, so the biceps / back involvement ranges between those two.
What they also do is give your forearms and hands a lot of work – it takes a fair amount of effort from them to hold on to a towel while pulling yourself up. This makes them a great choice for those of you who practice martial arts, rockclimbing, wrestling or simply want bigger forearms or a handshake to crush walnuts with.
How To Do Towel Pull-Ups
If you don’t have a pull-up bar that is no problem, as there are tons of possibilities to improvise one.
When To Do Them?
As said in the video, they make a nice finisher for days when you train your back and biceps together. At the end of those workouts, both will be quite exhausted and you may get a little bit more work out of them by letting them share the task.
Not For Beginners!
I consider towel pull-ups an advanced form of pull-ups and you should incorporate them into your workouts only after you are able to do at least seven full pull-ups. Before that, your forearms and hands should get enough exercise from regular chin-ups and pull-ups.
Picture courtesy of Andrew Malone.
2 Comments
Tell me about that white pull up bar. We don’t have door jams that are conducive to the P90X pull up bar and need to improvise. Where can I get the white bar? Is it screwed into studs? Using special screws? Is the bar steel or iron? Lot’s of questions but we are on week 3 of P90X and I want to try my first pull up.
Heah Tiffany, back then I had it custom-made by a small welding shop, but these days you can find similar ones if you do a search for “corner-mounted pull-up bar”.
It is made of steel and the holders on the walls are held in place with three inch screws and anchors. Which of course means you need solid brick or concrete walls to have it stay in place. Using it on drywalls would very likely to lead to catastrophe.
If all else fails, have a look at this article for various ways of doing pull-ups without equipment:
https://evilcyber.com/fitness/pullups-without-bar/