Niall's Weblog

I’ve been doing chin-ups and pull-ups for a while now, first at the gym and now at home since I bought a $15 chinning bar and drilled it into a door frame. In general it seems that chin-ups refer to the grip with your palms facing you whereas pull-ups refer to the grip with your palms facing away. My understanding is that chin-ups focus more on triceps and shoulders and that pull-ups are more of an upper back exercise. In any case, these are both great for developing strength.

The interesting thing about these exercises is that it is very difficult to do even a moderate number of reps. To score full marks on the US Marine Corps’ physical fitness test, you must be able to do twenty pull-ups from a dead hang. You are not allowed swing around or otherwise use body momentum. Twenty is not such a large number, but its unlikely you could manage even half that number of pull-ups without training. Many people cannot even manage a single pull-up – it is a very strenuous exercise.

Lately I’ve been focusing a bit more on pull-ups – doing them every day instead of a few times during the week when I felt like it. I was looking to see how other people train them – how many reps per set, how many sets per session, how much rest and so on – when I came across a number of pages describing the one armed pull-up and how to develop it. Although I have reasonably good upper-body strength and can do a not-pathetic number of pull-ups (12-13), there is no way I have anywhere near the strength to perform the exercise with just one arm. Beast Skills has a pretty comprehensive guide on how to train it, including pictures and links to other informative articles. What I find very interesting is that all the training guides stress stopping before failure. Failure of course is when your muscles simply have no power left and you are shaking from exertion. For various reasons, it seems that it is better to stop at 2/3 of failure or 3/4 of failure. Otherwise, you risk over-training and/or injury. In fact, over-training can make you weaker. A related technique is “Greasing the Groove” which involves doing multiple sets throughout the day, of low enough reps such that you never reach failure. Un-beknownst to myself, I’ve been using such a method to train pushups for the past few months. I have found it much more effective (and easier!) to train like this, than simply doing as many pushups as possible before you collapse.

Finally, all the guides to training for a one armed pull-up that I have read stress the importance of patience in order to achieve the goal. Time scales mentioned are six months to three years of training before you could do a one armed pull-up! I think this is a great reminder that exercise routines work over the long term, not the short term and that you must be patient and consistent in order to reap the benefits. Personally, I don’t plan to dedicate myself to the one armed pull-up just yet, but some of the other skills seem interesting. In particular, I’ve always wanted to be able to do a hand stand pushup, but have never felt very comfortable doing even a hand stand! Apparently it is better to be able to do a head stand first, then try for the hand stand, then try for the hand stand pushup. I’ll give this a shot. I also tried the elbow lever – as expected, I could not do it on my first try. However, I can see how with patience and practice, it would be achievable. I’ve also been trying some of the Planche progressions, starting with the frog stand, which is fun. Definitely enjoyable things to add to your exercise routine, and plenty to challenge yourself with!