Why your pull ups aren't improving
and of course how to fix it
Pull ups are one of the BEST exercises you can do for your shoulders. They check EVERY box
strength
ROM
muscle building
And even better, in most cases they are SHOULDER FRIENDLY
Meaning its rare they cause pain or make your pain worse.
I work with a lot of Marines who have to do pull ups for the fitness test.
Translation:
I work with a lot of injured Marines that train pull ups dumb and I have to “re-program” them so they
don’t get hurt
get better at pull ups
What’s dumb pull up training look like?
Sets to failure.
Like any physical accomplishment, we get tied to the NUMBER of reps versus the value in the training.
Pull ups need VOLUME (lots of reps), not INTENSITY (fatigue) to progress.
They are already a max effort event, so you have to keep reps relatively low, otherwise you’ll gas out and not get enough total volume.
Too much intensity and you just end up doing shitty reps.
What usually happens:
Warm up - somewhere between 0 and 5 reps
Set 1: max set (say 12)
Set 2: max set (say 8)
Set 3: max set (say 5)
Result - 25 total reps, and the last 2-3 reps of EACH set sucked.
The point of MAX is as many as you can. Each set will be subsequently worse, by definition.