The first pull-up is always the toughest to get when it comes to bodyweight exercises. The push-up and the dip, both push oriented moves, are easier to conquer than the pull-up and while it may take more time, the move is totally worth it. The pull-up engages most of your upper body muscles but also depends on grip, core strength, and a little bravery to jump up and grab the bar. Beginners will surely need help with starting to learn a pull-up, and this isn’t just in the form of a gym-buddy. Most help will come from knowing how to use gym equipment as you progress from step to step.
This isn’t really a guide on how to learn a pull-up. This is how to make learning it faster with the help of some tips and tricks from those who have mastered the move.
Chairs, boxes and bands
The first thing to do would be to find a shortcut to the top of a pull-up without performing one. The only way to do so is to use a box, climb on it, and start getting used to the height of the bar, the way it holds in your grip, and how the muscles feel when you have finally managed to get your chin above the bar. No box? Then use a chair. It’s like climbing a mountain on an elevator. Will it feel validating? No. But it will get you used to the world above.
Then come the bands. The large thicker ones, which you can hang onto the bar so you can wedge one or both feet into it to support your body. There is no shame in starting with the most support and slowly reducing the strength of the bands over a few weeks until you find a sweet spot. A little help, as long as your form is true, can be a great motivator and indicator of where your pull-up level lies.
The scapular dead hang
I wrote a detailed piece for Lounge in December 2022 on why the scapular pull-up is an important part of the back routine. The scapular dead hang is part of the learning curve but gives one the time to join the mind-muscle connection required to execute a pull-up. What happens at the bottom of the pull-up is that the arms bend just a bit as the tilts up, engaging the scapula muscles to stabilise the body and bring in the lat muscles. While doing dead hangs is great for spinal decompression and grip, making sure you do a few seconds of hanging while the scapulas are also engaged. This will get your body ready for the hardest part of the pull-up.
Inverted rows
Engaging the scapula muscles is one thing, but the key to a good pull-up is to make sure that they, along with the lats, are doing most of the work. A lot of beginners try to use their arms – and the smaller muscles simply fail to lift the entire body up. A good way to learn how to engage the lats during the pulling phase is by doing inverted rows on a machine with the barbell safely racked in place. While you can do this with an underhand grip, it is smarter to use the pronated grip to mimic a pull-up (and not a chin-up). With the elbows bending anywhere between 30 to 45 degrees in relation to the torso, and feet flat on the floor with the knees bent (for beginners), pull the bar towards your chest and feel the scapulas and the lats engage.
As you progress, change the placement of the feet. First unbend the knee and the final stage is to keep both feet straight and the body supported on the heels instead of the soles.
Isometric holds
An isometric hold, when done just for a few seconds, can feel like a defeat. But it’s unnatural to expect the body to do 10-15 seconds of a tough isometric hold while hanging on a bar on the first few days of training. This takes patience. But there are three isometric holds to try here. Take a box or a chair, get into a position where the chin is above the bar and the hands bent on either side as if you have completed the pull-up and then hold there for as long as possible. Hop back onto the chair, take a minute off and try again. As you get stronger, stop jumping off and start lowering the body onto the box. Then add a band. And do the same holds, but keep training the body to go all the way down. Start using the box or the chair only to go up.
The last hold involves touching the top of the head to the underside of the bar, hands bent outwards gripping the bar and holding there. This is where you start training the positioning of the feet in a pull-up, which is slightly ahead of the body with the quads and the core engaged.
Adding these exercises will make sure you keep transferring the strength and technique into a strict pull-up. It may take a long time, but doing these moves will prime your body into finally getting its first pull-up.