Trouble Doing Pull-Ups

Any time you train a specific movement or exercise, you get stronger through a mix of general and specific adaptations. If you have just about enough muscle in the right places to do one chinup, then regular training of the movement might give you just enough specific adaptations to put you over the top, so to speak. But it doesn’t sound like either general bodybuilding or a focused chinup program is adding enough extra muscle to turn you into a chin up machine. Given your age and training history, that doesn’t seem surprising.

Just saw a YT clip of a guy doing 50 pull-ups and 100 pushups in little over 4 1/2 minutes. The goal was to do this in 5 minutes.

The first THIRTY pull-ups were done non stop … one set … with good form too. Just blew me away . My goal was always to get 20 reps in three sets and just reached that a couple months ago and when I got 3 X 7 with a 30 seconds between sets, I was happy. One set of twelve kills me,

Now I see this guy knocking out 50 and I feel like an invalid, LOL.

Now, no doubt the haters on here will blast it apart, etc so I wouldn’t even volunteer the link … but those of us who have a hard time with pull ups would be blown away seeing this guy. Has a great physique too.

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I’m sure you can’t even fathom someone like me who is still struggling to do one or two reps! Ha ha !!
Scott

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Pull ups were always the hardest exercise for me too and still are. I rarely could get more than a couple reps in a second set after the first set of 5-6. Though 3 X 7 isn’t anything to write home about , it was really tough for me to reach. I kept hammering away at a single set to failure , adding a half a rep every once in awhile … on a good day .

After what seemed like 100 years I was finally able to do a good set of 10-12 weighing around 192. An attempt at a second set maybe would get me three more.

On the old forum Turpin suggested that since I could do a set of 12, to quit doing that to failure and start doing multiple sets of low reps … and that immediately made a difference. I’m not doing sets of thirty but am doing SETS on pull-ups, which was impossible for me for twenty plus years - until I quit the SSTF approach.

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You may remember a short while ago I couldn’t do one rep of chins, palms facing me. I started focusing on chins doing 5-7 negative reps with a few minutes rest between reps and some dead hangs and a few chin attempts before my regular 30 10 30 workout . Finally for some reason one day I could actually do one and I even repeated one several times that day, chin over the bar. Then the Hollidays interrupted that and I just did a few chin efforts and focused on my 30 10 30 each workout. Now I’m back to square one again. Can’t do one. The last two workouts I did my 30 10 30 and after that started doing 5–7 negative chins as long as I can hold them and chin efforts . I felt recovered after 3 days off. I am improving at just hanging there with my chin over the bar and am decending a little slower each time. At this rate maybe if I’m lucky by next Christmas I’ll get another rep! Ha ha!!

I suggested this to you before on the old forum but you didn’t try it and you probably won’t now since you’re into the 3010 30 thing … which has been impossible with pull-ups , especially for someone who has trouble with regular style pull ups.

Get to the top and just lower yourself about a quarter or a third the way … where ever you can pull your self back up up from and do a few reps that way - but not to failure. Rest 30- 40 seconds or whatever and do another set. I bet you’ll be able to do a few sets of these partial reps and then progress in range of motion / number of reps from there but don’t rush the progress … you don’t have to progress every workout.

Just try it … you tried everything else.

I’ll give it a try, thanks!
Scott

Good … and let me know how it goes. I think you’ll be plenty strong enough to do a few sets of 1/3 reps - not to failure. I bet it’s the bottom half where you’re falling apart and maybe easing into that part by doing the partials will get you strong enough . I think too that you will break you of that mental barrier and dread of not doing more than one rep. It’s worth a try .

But right now you’re probably still worn out from all those Christmas lights you hung all over the neighborhood !

You’re not to far off with the Christmas lights . If you look up Hollys Tacky Christmas lights in Arlington Virginia our house on Quebec St is listed among the top

crazy displays.

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I suggested this to you before on the old forum but you didn’t try it and you probably won’t now since you’re into the 3010 30 thing … which has been impossible with pull-ups , especially for someone who has trouble with regular style pull ups.
== Scott==
I’m curious why 30 10 30 might be impossible with pull-ups? I’m finding 30 10 30 to be fairly easy compared to how I’d feel after my typical workout so chins after or before 30 10 30 doesn’t seem like a problem?
Scott

Reason I said ‘impossible’ is because for me it’s unthinkable.

Ten or twelve reps of pull-ups kills me and that’s being the first exercise of the day - fresh. The thought of doing a 30 second negative and then without any rest do ten regular pull-ups in good form … besides doing another 30 second negative without any rest, would never happen for me.

To do something similar it would have to be pulldowns so I could drastically reduce the resistance for the ten reps … and probably again for the second slow negative … or use an assisted machine and I’m sure that isn’t what Darden is talking about.

BTW, where do you live , in an abandoned warehouse ? To be able to have that Nautilus museum you own besides a place to store your unreal Christmas displays , it has to be some house !

I’m sorry but I didn’t mean I do the chins 30 10 30 , I do my regular workout 30 10 30 and the chins are just a couple of lame efforts afterward which include a few chin efforts and then the negatives to follow that . I can’t even desend slowly enough to do a 30 second chin negative. Yes 30 10 30 chins would be impossible. I actually live in a very small 1890s house with a barn shaped shed in the back. My machines are squished among my workshop and car port. Some machines are not accessible do to stuff piled on top of them but I wouldn’t use them anyway. When I get into something I usually go nuts collecting them like Nautilus, Christmas , military artillery, tools, cameras , you name it. I’ve always said I need a 200 ft barn, ha ha!!
Scott

As you can tell I really like old stuff , the only old stuff I’m not fond of is the getting old part, ha ha! I keep forgetting I’m older now and can’t always do what I used to do , ha ha!
Scott

I checked out your Christmas display… when do you start arranging that ? It’s unbelievable ! Do you do it as you go along or are you designing this and thinking about it all year ? It’s obviously a lot of fun for you but packing it up has to be something you aren’t looking forward to.

I think next year you should rent you neighbors yard for Dec. and see if you can fill that too !!

We usually pull the stuff out thanksgiving day and set it up on that long weekend . I try to make each set up differently. Once I had all the Santa’s with George Washington Santa crossing the Delaware in a boat , fishing, or kayaking or skiing , playing football or protesting or whatever . One year I pulled most of my nautilus/exercise machines out front and had the Santa’s working out! Sometimes we plan way ahead of time what to do but more more than not it’s a last minute decision. Like working out After some 30 years of this it’s getting harder and harder to come up with something new. The inside of the house is just as crazy but smaller stuff. We do a similar thing for Halloween but I get more political then and not quite as much stuff . Alien invasions, pirates, monsters, skeletons . I had fun with Trump this year!
Scott

Wow! Between the nautilus machines and the decorations, you have a lot of stuff to store. Do you have a large barn or something like that?

Just a two car garage sized shed in the back yard. I’ve always wanted a 200 foot long barn, ha ha . It’s probably a good thing I don’t have one as I’m sure it would be full of Nautilus machines , old cars etc, etc, ha ha! I have a friend who has at least 57 Nautilus machines he stores and putters on in two warehouses. Even on here I see guys who fill up their basement with Nautilus. It’s an illness , ha ha!
Scott

==Scott==
So today I tried as you said. I jumped up to the top position of the chinning bar and tried to lower myself down just so my eyes were below the bar . I couldn’t even pull myself back up from there . I tried that several times. Oh well…

Thanks sgg this is really amazing. After spending a lot of time trying to understand the mechanics of how this works, I ran across the the following article by accident, which has an exercise the author calls the ’ Pull-up Inverted Row Hip Thruster Combo’:

I think this would be better named the ‘Hip thrust inverse pullover’. This does work the glutes nicely, but the big deal I see is this works the lats through a full rotational movement, just a like a Nautilus pullover. Leaning forward at the stretched end ads a little range compared to the example. The upper arms are parallel to gravity at the contracted position, making this the max point of the resistance curve, just like the curve provided by a Nautilus pullover cam. The strength curve target of the Nautilus pullover machine shows that the contracted position should be the ideal max resistance point of a pullover, but what perplexed me was the need to make the stretched end more difficult as described in your post. The answer is, just like a barbell row, which depending on the angle can also have the contracted position at the same point that the upper arms are parallel, the resistance curve is a lot more severe than the strength curve. Sort of like the aggressive cam in the original Nautilus pullover, but even more pronounced. Just as you say, elevating the feet as done in the inverse row very neatly counterbalances this overly aggressive resistance curve. With the angles shown in the example video linked above, for me the resistance curve of this ‘inverse pullover’ seems to match my strength curve amazingly well. And so far the resulting body weight, which is less than for a full chin since some of the weight is relieved by the feet being on a stool, is the perfect weight for 30-10-30. Adding weight to the lap with maybe a weight belt, would increase the resistance for the lats, as well as for the glutes. I was planning to build a diy pullover machine with cam, but this puts that project at the bottom of my list.

So I finally got to the point where I can do one chin. I know , big deal! Yesterday I decided to try seeing how many chins I could do if I spread them out to one every 1/2 hour or so. I managed to do 8. On the 9th one I couldn’t get my chin over the bar. I was wondering if I’d feel it today . I can feel it in my lats just a tad. Funny thing is I’m sure had I been able to do 8 consecutive chins I’d really feel it today. I wonder why that is?
Scott

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