benjamyn smith doing modified pull up

Exercises To Help You Do Pull Ups – All You Need Is A Bar

Looking for your first pull-up? Pull ups are a pretty strength demanding movement. So I’ve come up with these 6 exercises to help you do pull ups! These exercises are designed to build on each other to become progressively more challenging.

 

6 Exercises To Help You Do Pull Ups

We’re going to start at the very beginning with hanging. You need to be able to hang for a reasonable amount of time before you start doing pull ups. If you can’t then your shoulders aren’t strong enough yet. Try and get about 10 minutes of hanging total throughout the day.

As you get more comfortable with hanging, start changing out the static hanging for swinging. Swinging will increase the load on your shoulders, back, and grips to develop them further. It’s important to build this foundation for healthy shoulders and safe pull up.

Next, we’re going to progressively train your core and back so that you can get into a supported position for modified pull-ups. It starts with hanging knee raises, moves to a foot pinch next, and finally graduates to a full on leg hook.

It may sound odd to do all of this core work, but it’s important to make sure you back maximizes its force generation during a pull up. If your core is weak, you will have a weak pull up. These movements also work your back and shoulders more than you realize.

Once you can comfortably do the leg hook you’re ready for modified pull ups! Once in the leg hook position, just keep executing a few sets of modified pull ups every day until you’re strong enough to do a pull up!

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