How To Increase Your Pull-Ups From 0 to 10+ Reps FAST (3 Science-Based Tips)

If your pull up game currently looks and sounds something like this, yeah, you want it to look something like this and fast, then you've come to the right place. Pull ups are one of the best, if not the best exercises for increasing the size and strength of your upper back and arm muscles while also contributing to your core development. I'd actually attribute most of my back development to the several years I spent regularly performing pull ups and not to mention that it's an extremely convenient exercise as well given that you can effectively work your back muscles with just a bar and the use of your body weight. However, this does come with a price as pull ups are generally one of the most difficult exercises to master. In fact, most individuals have yet to even achieve their first pullup and for those who have, they'll then often struggle with increasing the total number of pullups that they can perform. And although you've probably already tried a few things to help strengthen your pullups or achieve your first ever pullup, the truth is that most people simply use the wrong approaches. Im sorry to break it to you, but hammering away with lat pulldowns and the assisted pull up machine just wont cut it. In this video though, Ill show you what research indicates are the most effective steps and routines to achieving your first pull up and then getting them into the double digits in the fastest way possible. The first thing you need to do is focus on strengthening the prime movers involved in the pull up. More specifically, based on research such as this 2018 EMG analysis, the muscles most activated and involved in the pull up are the core, the biceps, the lats and the mid and lower traps and are therefore the muscles that you'll want to focus on strengthening. Because as suggested by the researchers, by training each of these muscles with alternative pulling exercises you'll be able to strengthen them to the point where they're cumulatively strong enough for you to achieve a pull up and will also indirectly boost your pull up strength in the event that you can currently only successfully do a few. So what are the best alternative exercises to strengthen these prime movers? Well first we're going to start with scapula pull ups to target the lower traps which is especially important for your pull up strength given that they've been shown to be more active and involved in the pullup when compared to chin ups or any other pull up variation and could therefore very well be the limiting factor for you. And to perform this exercise you simply hang from a bar, relax your shoulders down and away from your ears and then pull your body up without allowing your elbows to bend with a slight pause at the top. This movement will not only help with strengthening your lower traps as well as your grip strength for the pull up, but the movement itself is an essential component of the pull up. Given that the pull up actually consists of two phases with phase one involving the subtle motion of the scapula pull up and then phase two involving the actual pulling up to the bar. It just doesn't look like it because because it's typically performed as one fluid motion, but just showcases how important this seemingly insignificant muscle really is for your pull up strength. Next we'll move on to the knee lean lat pulldown to now primarily strengthen the lats and the core as well as the biceps. Now, although the traditional seated lat pulldown is quite a similar movement as the bodyweight pull up and therefore seems as if it would transfer well in terms of strength developments, the this just isn't the case as research has found that there's actually a relatively weak correlation between the two exercises, meaning that getting stronger in the seated lat pulldown doesn't seem to increase pull up strength very well. And the reasoning for this seems to be with the lack of core involvement in the seated lat pulldown, which you now know is a major component of the pull up. Illustrating this is a 2018 EMG analysis which aimed to find the best supplemental exercise for pull up strength based on the pattern of muscle activation of the prime movers. And what the researchers found was that when compared to seated lat pulldowns in the assisted pull up machine, the knee lean lat pulldown elicited significantly greater core activation and was the only exercise that demonstrated the same activation pattern as a pull up, meaning that theoretically this exercise provides the best strength transference to your pull up given the similarity of both movements in terms of muscle activation patterns and is therefore essential that we include it here. Next we're going to use the inverted row to further strengthen the pulling strength of your lats, core and arms, but to also emphasize the mid traps a little more, which we know based on the activation research shown earlier is a highly involved muscle in the pullup. This exercise was chosen based on research from the American Council of Exercise which showed that the inverted row not only highly activates the lats but also outperforms other rowing movements like the barbell row in terms of mid traps activation and therefore would be another great exercise to our arsenal to strengthen the prime movers involved in the pullup for this exercise simply hang from a bar with Your legs extended on the ground and pull up until your chest just about reaches the bar. Then you'll want to progress this over time by simply lowering the bar and or elevating your feet to get your body more horizontal. Next, we want to get some actual pull up training in to not only continue strengthening our prime movers, but to neurologically get better at the movement itself. But obviously, if you're unable to do a pull up or you just can't do very many, you'll have to first use alternative exercises to accomplish this. And the first exercise we'll use for this purpose is the banded pull up, which I'd highly recommend incorporating since it's the closest exercise to the pull up itself. And it's also going to give you a major confidence boost being able to get your head over that bar. But with this exercise, it's crucial that you progress it over time by first starting with heavier band for more resistance and then gradually moving to lighter and lighter resistance once you can do over 10 reps at each level. And as for the assisted pull up machine, this is a somewhat decent alternative, but just isn't as effective given the low amount of core activation we see in this exercise and the vast differences in the muscle activation patterns of the prime movers when we compare it to the pull up itself. Now, finally, we'll use negative pull ups to work on strengthening the eccentric portion of the pull up and to also just get you more comfortable with feeling what it's like to control your body weight against gravity. For these, simply jump up or use the step up to get yourself to the top position of the pull up and then descend as slow as you're capable of. At first, you likely won't be able to control your descent very well, but this will very quickly improve and you'll want to try to work up to a 32nd descent, which will translate to huge strength gains in your actual pull up. So, to sum up the previous exercise, here is the exact routine that you'll want to use to get to your first 110 pull ups. You want to perform this twice a week and simply replace all of your back training for the week with this routine. And as you do this, given that increasing frequency is highly correlated with faster strength gains, what I want you to do is, during the start of both of these workouts and one to two other workouts that you do for the week, simply perform two sets where you try to do as many pull ups as you can. Over time, you'll notice this number very quickly improve and then Once you can succeed successfully do roughly 1012 clean pull ups in a single set, it's time to move on to the next step which involves progressing your pull ups and to do so you want to simply start adding additional resistance to your pull ups with the use of a dumbbell or weight belt in order to continue overloading your pull ups and to enable you to stick within that rep range that will be most effective for hypertrophy as your pull up strength improves. So once you get to this stage, what I'd recommend is the following first off, program in pull ups into your current routine twice a week with the following set and rep range. I'd also recommend still doing and progressing the movements previously discussed as part of your back training as well, except for the banded pull ups as these other movements will continue to complement your weighted pull up strength very well. Secondly, start with as little as 2.55 pounds of additional resistance and aim to increase the amount of reps you can do with this added weight. Then once you're able to perform 34 sets of 10 clean reps at this weight, add another 2.55 pounds and repeat the process. Id recommend repeating this process for 4 weeks and then take a deload or easy week for your pull ups by switching your pullups for another back exercise or just performing bodyweight pull ups for that week in order to boost your recovery before then going back to the weighted progression. And lastly, I'd also recommend that one of these pull up days be a slightly slight variation of the pull up like a chin up or a neutral grip pull up for example. These variations have been shown to work your prime movers to a slightly different degree and pattern than the pull up does, which helps not only indirectly boost your strength in the traditional pull up but also helps prevent overuse injuries from developing over time, especially once you start using heavier weights. So to sum the video up for you, here is the overall action plan designed to take you to your first pull up, then to your first 1012 pull ups and then to your first weight pull up and beyond and in the fastest way possible. But all in all, hopefully you can see that by applying the right science and the proper steps into your weekly routine, you'll be able to experience significantly faster results. And for step by step science based program that builds these protocols and exercises into your weekly plan for you and shows you how to properly progress them over time such that you can break through plateaus and pack on size and strength in the most effective way possible. Just like countless other members have successfully done with their Built with Science programs, then simply head on over to builtwithscience.com and take the analysis quiz to discover which program is best for you and your specific body. Anyways, guys, I hope you enjoyed this one. Please do me a favor and show your support by giving the video a like leaving a comment down below as to what you'd like to see me cover next, subscribing to the channel and turning on notifications for the channel as well as this all really does help me out. Thank you so much everyone. I'll see you next time.