How To Improve Your Pull-Ups

5 Exercises To Massively Improve Your Pull-Up Numbers

Pull Ups are amongst the best exercises you can do to develop strength in your upper body. But there’s no denying…they’re challenging. Lots of people set a goal to get their first pull up, or aim to improve the total number of pull ups they can do. Below are 5 exercises to dramatically improve your pull up game.

1. Straight Arm Pulldowns
   Isolates and strengthens your lats for the pull up
2. Seated Dumbbell External Rotation
   Strengthen your rotator cuffs to help with shoulder stability
3. Preacher Curls
   The pull up requires good arm strength too, so preachers will build bicep strength
4. Bent Over Rows
   Barbell rows recruit nearly the same collection of muscles as pull ups do
5. Bench Press
   Bench press and pull ups massively benefit each other. In a Bench Press, your back muscles control the weight on the way down, helping with stability on the pull up

Tips for better pull ups:

• Keep the chest up and pull your elbows downwards using your lats, instead of initiating the movement with your hands/arms. Don’t cut the range of motion short or swing up.
• Vary your grips and hand spacing to improve your pull-up performance.
• If you can’t do any pull-ups yet, start with band assisted pull-ups and do more work on the negative portion or eccentric phase (when you lower down from the top).

Here’s a great workout to try it all out.

“How many pull ups can you do?”