training for pull ups part 2(progression drills)

In order for you to get your chin over the bar, i always prefer chest over the bar because i am able to engage my back even more,  there are of course some prerequisites for you to have just for safety sake before moving on to some progression.  I'm not saying don't take risk I'm saying that getting injured is a pain so here are 3 most important ones.

No injuries:
If you do have shoulder pain, back pain or any joint problem especially the elbow its best for you to address the pain! Never my friend let pain decrease your performance as a human being.

Healthy weight and slightly lean:
If you have excess fat, I suggest you focus on a different goals first because trust me pull up is already hard for moderately strong people, having excess weight means you have to work extra harder, its science. I’m not bursting your bubble, you can attempt to get a pull up but its not going to get easy without a certain degree of leanness also extra weight means extra pressure on your joints.

Willing to work for it:
Your not going to get it in one day, therefore keep going until you do if its your goal. 


So here are some progression.

Lat pulldown

its not a reverse pull up, you should do lat pulldown for a while to develop a basic level of strength in your lats and biceps that will help you with pull-ups down, if your overweight, its best to begin with this for safety , also it teaches you to engage the posterior muscle.

Machine Assisted pull ups

Basically pin down a weight that you can easily do 10 reps but struggle at 12 reps if its your first time, if you weight 50kg, and if you pin it at 30 kg means your pulling 20kg of weight up, as you get better you want to keep pinning less weight and try not to bend at hips keep every thing straight and try to focus on the lats, also take note of the weight you are using for progress.

Band assisted pull ups 

Basically you use a band! They come in a lot of sizes, the thicker the more resistance, i first came across this in Crossfit Singapore , on days i feel lazy and weak i would grab onto a band and do my WOD! (workout of the day ) whats best about the bands is that it replicate a assisted pull up machine but your body will keep swinging if you do not control your movement, therefore you are required to do more work and engage your core!

Bands are also easy to carry around and you can bring it to the park or anywhere really and since this is one of my favourite progressive drills I've drop a call to MOVEMENT FIRST  and convinced the boss to give all of my readers a 10 % of  a set of POWER BANDS, i'm not promoting any brands but out of all this is one of the most affordable bands in Singapore and its solid, if you were to order from  other Crossfit websites such as ROGUE you will be paying 100 USD for 3 bands not inclusive of shipping, so if  you are on a tight budget and want to get that chin over the bar i highly recommend you get a set of your own POWER BANDS (click here) and use  my  voucher code: JDPB10  
which limits to the first 50 buyers before 12 of September 2014

Negative pull ups

So want to try something more challenging? grab a box and jump up on a pull up bar and slowly lowering yourself down, best to count down to 5 second, do as many as you can until you cannot control your movement because its very demanding,you do want to look after your joints . This was the bulk of pull up practice i did everyday because i couldn't afford bands and there's not many fancy gadgets then!