If there’s one body weight exercise that is the staple for upper body strength, it’s the pull up. Many otherwise strong and fit looking men and women struggle just to do a few solid reps.
If you’re struggling to get your numbers up, then this article is for you. I have the simplest and most effective methods for increasing pull ups that have worked for myself and for many others. It isn’t fancy. It isn’t complicated. But, it works. And that’s all that matters.
If you can’t do a single pull up, I recommend starting out using Pull up resistance bands, and spending some time focusing on getting stronger before you start trying to boost your numbers.
What won’t work
I always like to start off with the common mistakes people make when trying to achieve a goal. In this case, the biggest mistake I see (and have made myself) is trying to do way too much volume.
Following someone else’s 200 pull ups per day method isn’t going to work for you if you can only get a few solid reps. Even if you can do 10 right now. It just isn’t necessary to kill yourself with hundreds of reps!
Check out these two simple methods, then read on to see how you can use them together to boost your pull up numbers dramatically.
Greasing the Groove
“Greasing the Groove” is a term coined by Pavel Tsatsouline, the legendary Russian Trainer. It means performing a movement often, without going to failure or using heavy resistance. The purpose is to reinforce the movement pattern.
The human body is an amazing machine. It is always seeking efficiency: The ability to perform tasks using the least amount of energy. If we repeat something often, we reinforce the neuromuscular efficiency of that movement.
Repetition teaches the nervous system to more efficiently recruit muscle fibers to perform the movement.
**If you don’t have access to a gym, get a Doorway Pull up Bar and do them from home!
How to “Grease the Groove.”
To use this method, simply perform a set of one or two pull ups periodically throughout the day, keeping a count of how many total reps you’re doing. Start with a low number like 10 or 20 each day and slowly increase that number over time.
Using this method, you shouldn’t be going for max reps or pushing the envelope at all. You simply perform a couple reps, and then go on about your business.
The Once a Day Max Rep Set
A few years ago, while preparing for a military training, I had a goal of being able to do 20 pull ups. At the time I was able to get 8-10.
I researched several methods and took advice from a lot of people. I tried using pyramids and my numbers actually suffered. Every approach I used involved high volume. I was doing hundreds of pull ups, but I still couldn’t get more than 10 in one set.
Then I ran into a trainer who really changed my perspective on the whole problem. He told me to just do one set every day of as many reps as possible, then leave it alone. Fast forward about 6 weeks from that day, and vuola! I got 21 pull ups!
How to use the once a day max rep method
This is probably the easiest method possible. And while I know people love fancy programs and schemes, all that matters at the end of the day is what works. And this works.
Simply perform one set of max reps of pull ups each day. It’s tempting to want to do more, but don’t. We have it ingrained in us that more is better. But this is a myth in a lot of ways, and training smarter is a real thing.
You can expect that your numbers will go up and down periodically. Don’t be discouraged, as there will be an upward trend if you just continue the process.
Combine the methods
Now that you understand these methods, let me give you a template I’ve used to get really big improvements in pull ups. You can simply alternate between the two methods, taking one day per week off completely.
If you work out, just perform your pull ups at the beginning of the workout and then go about your training as you usually do.
Conclusion
Most people want to be able to do more pull ups. It’s always impressive to watch someone jump up and bang out 20 solid reps on the bar. And that can be you!
To recap, we discussed:
Greasing the Groove: repeating a movement often to reinforce movement patterns. This means not going to failure, but doing a few reps repeatedly throughout the day.
Neuromuscular efficiency: The nervous system learns to perform a movement more efficiently, recruiting more muscle fibers faster, using the least amount of energy.
Once a Day method: Performing one set of max reps each day.
Follow these methods for 6 weeks, and let me know how much your numbers improved!
Until next time, thanks for being here, and I hope this article helps you get a little bit closer to that best version of you.
*Note: This article contains affiliate links. Any item purchases comes at no additional cost to you, and is considered a quality product by us.
Mike (Supastrong)
Bioforce Certified Conditioning Coach and personal trainer. I’ve run boot camps and served as the wellness coordinator for a fortune 500 company. Currently a Federal Agent in San Diego, CA, and an Infantryman in the Army Reserve.
This is a Strength and Conditioning workout I designed for combat athletes. It’s pretty brutal, and will definitely challenge your conditioning.
The Workout
Round 1: 3 minutes as many reps as possible of Man Makers.
Rest 1-3 minutes, depending on your level and how much you like a good kick in the balls.
Round 2: 3 Minutes as many burpees as you can do
Rest 1-3 minutes, depending on your level and how much you like a good kick in the balls.
Round 3: 3 Minutes as many rounds of MMA Drill 1 (see video) as you can do.
Rest 1-3 minutes, depending on your level and how much you like a good kick in the balls.
Round 4: 3 Minutes as many round as you can get of:
10 Push Ups
10 Squats
5 Pull ups (modify if you need to)
What This Workout is Designed to Do
This HIIT session is designed to improve aerobic power (the amount of oxygen you can use) as well as anaerobic capacity.
3 Minutes is a long time to go all out. Just like in a fight, you have to be able to keep going. Doing anything after man makers isn’t fun, especially burpees.
Workouts like this will definitely boost your mental toughness as well. It’s nice to know you can suffer so much and still put out. If you’re looking for more on mental toughness, check out this article
If you try this out, let me know! Thanks for being here, now go get some.
Mike (Supastrong)
Bioforce Certified Conditioning Coach and personal trainer. I’ve run boot camps and served as the wellness coordinator for a fortune 500 company. Currently a Federal Agent in San Diego, CA, and an Infantryman in the Army Reserve.
Is HIIT harmful? Can it damage your health and fitness? It all depends how you use it…
Snapshot:
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has become a popular training method for squeezing in a workout in a small amount of time.
Failure to balance high and low intensity training methods can hurt your fitness and your health. HIIT is a powerful tool to be respected.
HIIT, performed properly, can improve several markers of fitness, both aerobic and anaerobic, heart rate recovery and peak power output. (1)
High Intensity Training has infiltrated almost every corner of the fitness landscape. But is HIIT actually improving, or sabotaging your health and fitness level?
What is HIIT?
High Intensity Interval Training refers to any workout in which you are:
Working out at greater than 90% of your max heart rate
Using maximum-intensity periods of work followed by rest periods
Examples: Interval Sprints, High Intensity Circuits done for 3 minutes with a short rest period between sets.
The Allure of HIIT
HIIT is the preferred method of many with limited time to work out. The rationale is, you can squeeze a quick HIIT workout in 20 minutes and get the same benefit as an hour of a normal workout. For the majority of us with crazy busy lives, HIIT offers a convenient solution.
Many also believe that performing such high intensity training simply must be more beneficial. After all, it’s harder and requires you to really push yourself when compared to an hour of lower intensity training. It’s the widely accepted misconception that more is better.
The Problem
Too much HIIT causes a massive recovery debt and chronic stress-state
I hate to be the one to kill a good vibe.. but I feel like it’s my duty to expose this problem so you can hopefully have a better understanding of what you’re actually doing in the gym and to your body and mind.
First off, I have to be clear that I’m not saying that HIIT training is “Bad.” There are actually plenty of studies that show some really amazing results, and I’ll cover that later. But….
To understand the problem with too much HIIT training, you have to understand a few things about your body and how it responds to stress:
Stress, from anything.. be it work stress, being stuck in traffic, relationship stress, or really intense physical demands.. is registered by the body in a similar way.
The sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) is activated in response to stress, dumping stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, into the body.
Keeping your body in a state of constant, chronic stress is the opposite of promoting health and fitness. The body cannot recover, build muscle or improve any markers of fitness when it is in a chronic state of stress.
The main take-away here is that HIIT training is INTENSE… and it takes your body a lot longer than you think to actually fully recover from it. A really high intensity trainings session can take several days to recover from.
What You’re doing to Your Body
use both forms of training for optimal fitness gains
Overdosing yourself with too much high intensity training is causing you to accumulate an ever increasing recovery debt. Your body is never fully recovered, and is being forced back into a sympathetic, stress dominant state over and over. Sooner or later, something will give.
The massive amounts of energy being demanded by constant stress will be recruited from other areas.. your immune system, your cognitive function.. and a host of other functions you probably don’t want to mess with. The end result is a reduction in actual fitness and health.
New Research into HIIT and Overtraining
A new study by Les Mills Lab found that 40 minutes a week of HIIT training was optimal for most people. Beyond this amount of high intensity training, most people will not reap additional benefits and will in fact become more fatigued. Read about the study by Les Mills here.
How Much HIIT is Optimal?
The answer to this question depends on your current level of fitness and the nature of the training. Remember that HIIT refers to training at maximum intensity (at least 90% of max heart rate).
For 90% of people out there, there is absolutely no need for more than 2 true high intensity training days per week. Elite athletes rarely ever go beyond 3 days per week, and even then it is only for a short time.
So how much is optimal? Well, if you’re in pretty good shape, 2 days per week would be optimal. If you’re out of shape, 1-2 days per week is where I’d recommend starting. If you feel like you’re in great shape, you can utilize HIIT up to 3 times per week, but definitely keep an eye on your fatigue, and if you’re that serious about your fitness, you can use things like heart rate variability to check in on your body and see if it’s being overstressed.
Now that I’ve sufficiently killed the HIIT vibe, let me backpedal a bit.. To be clear, HIIT is not a bad thing. It is actually a well researched, highly productive form of training.. Studies have shown that you can improve aerobic and anaerobic conditioning, get leaner and stronger utilizing high intensity interval training.
A 2017 study by Frontiers in Physiology found that high intensity interval training was superior to lower intensity training, showing improved:
Anaerobic power
Heart rate recovery
Neuromuscular status (peak power)
Conclusion
So what are we to make of all this? HIIT can cause big improvements in fitness, but can also damage fitness.. what do we do?
Balance is always the key to growth
Knowledge really is power. HIIT is a powerful tool in your arsenal, with the capacity to dramatically improve your conditioning and fitness. But it is to be respected…
Your training week should include a lower intensity training day for each high intensity day. This way you can reap the benefits of both types of training, without putting your body in a constant state of stress. Lower intensity training promotes recovery and parasympathetic function.
Get ready to push your conditioning on this one. Full Body movements with explosive components.. This will test your metal for sure.
Excuse the video quality. Had to use my phone for this one, but it’s enough to get the idea
All you need are 2 kettlebells (or dumbells) and something heavy to throw around. I’m using a 50lb slam ball, but work with what you got. If you don’t have a rower, then do 45 second sprints or rows.
Each round is 5 Minutes total… 4 minutes of work, followed by 1 minute of rest. Complete 4 rounds getting in as many reps as possible. = 20 Minutes.
Round 1: Kbell high pulls x 8/Overhead throw x 5
Round 2: Kbell Clean and Press x 8/Over the shoulder throw x 5
Round 3: 250 meter row/Explosive Pushup x 8
Round 4: Single arm Kbell swing x 15/explosive wall throws x 5
This Method of Training Will:
Increase VO2 max
Increase ability to sustain high intensity effort for longer
Improve strength and power endurance
Improve Your Mental Toughness
Improve Aerobic abilities
Tips
Try to keep good form under fatigue.
During rest periods, really try to drive your heart rate down as much as possible.
Wear a heart rate monitor, get familiar with what HR you begin to reach that deep state of fatigue.
Make sure to follow this session up with a Recovery Training day the next day. Don’t train HIIT/High intensity back to back days. For more on recovery check out my article on Recovery Training
Recovery Training should be performed the day after a high intensity session. Learning How to recover faster can be a game changer.
Prioritizing recovery will speed up your gains and reduce injuries.
Purposefully using recovery training can improve your strength, endurance and resilience to stress.
“No Pain, No gain…”
“The harder you train, the more you gain…”
This is the common logic used by most of us who are passionate about our training. But the logic is wrong, and it’s costing you. Best case it will simply cost you progress in your training. Worst case, it’ll take an injury or two, or three, to make you realize the importance of properly programming recovery into your training.
I used the train-all-out-every-day method for a long time. I was stuck in a cycle of driving myself into the ground. I always wondered why I wasn’t much better with all the effort I put in. Recovery was the missing link.
What is Recovery Training?
Recovery Training is a specific type of training you can implement to speed up recovery from more intense sessions. Recovery training will allow your body to adapt to training faster, i.e., you can get bigger, stronger, better.. in less time, with less risk for injury.
Why You Need It
Training with high intensity more than once or twice a week should be reserved for elite level athletes. Even they keep it to no more than 3 high intensity sessions per week. This is because the body simply cannot recover from (and adapt to) that much intensity. Training too hard, too often will lead to negative results 100% of the time. Get it out of your head that progress = max effort every time you train. Research clearly tells us that this is false. Check out my article on the dangers of too much High Intensity Training Here: Is HIIT sabotaging your fitness?
How to Implement Recovery Training to Recover Faster
A Recovery Session can be broken down into 5 parts. The total length of the session shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes or so.
1. Breathing
Assume a quadruped position (on all fours) on the floor, or just lay flat on your back. Take in 5 deep breaths through the nose, and out through the mouth. This isn’t meditation. You’re simply preparing the mind and body for the upcoming session. Take note of any soreness or fatigue you feel in the body.
2. Foam Rolling and Light Stretching
Perform about 5 minutes of light, dynamic stretching and foam rolling. This isn’t the time to do static stretching (holding for prolonged periods). Check out the video below by TrainHeroic (an amazing app if you’re looking for training programs and great coaches). The “Agile 8” is a great warmup.
Video by TrainHeroic. Check their App out for awesome programming
3. 30 Minutes of Light Cardiovascular Training
This is best accomplished with a heart rate monitor. You should aim to keep the heart rate between 120-135 beats per minute. You can use any method you want… treadmill, elliptical, swimming, light shadow boxing or drills, or a mixture of implements. I like to spend 10 minutes on 3 different activities.
4. 1-2 Strength Movements
Perform 1-2 strength movements, preferably full body compound movements like the Deadlift or Olympic lifts. Perform 3 sets of 3-5 reps at no more than 85-90% of your max. Aim a little low if you’re in doubt. We want to stimulate recovery in the body and nervous system, not incur more stress to recover from.
5. Cool Down, Stretching, Breathing
Spend the last 10 minutes or so with a cool down. Perform 5 minutes of very light cardio, and really try to drive the heart rate as low as possible. Spend another 5 minutes or so doing some longer, static stretching. Continue to focus on being relaxed. End the session the same way you started. Take some deep, relaxing breaths. Drive the heart rate as low as you can. You should walk out of the gym feeling good.
The Benefits of The Recovery Session
This light training will allow your body to remove waste products built up from previous, higher intensity workouts. It will push blood flow into the joints, ligaments and tendons, which can be slower to recover. Blood flow will also be pushed into damaged muscle tissue, speeding up recovery.
Most importantly, the low intensity cardiovascular work trains the heart to pump more blood per beat (cardiac output). The low intensity work is essential for a strong foundation of aerobic fitness. A strong aerobic base allows the body to recover faster… You see where this is going?
By prioritizing recovery, your high intensity sessions, once or twice a week, can become even more intense and productive, and your progress will certainly become more rapid. You’ll be less likely to get injured, more resilient, and healthier overall. Learning how to recover faster has dramatically improved my overall fitness and conditioning, and I know it will do the same for you. Let me know what you think!
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