Thread: Pull Ups

Assisted pullups, maybe negatives?

Very Slow Negatives, or If you can get some one to help you out, try these- http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/.../AsChinup.html -they are better than the machine assisted pull-ups IMO

So for the assissted pullups, should i like start with the same as my personnal weight then slowly work myself up to 0?

just curious- is the weight on the lat-pull down machine that you use the same as your own bodyweight?

Wow, thanx guys Think i'm gonna try them out later. Thanx for the prompt reply.

Well, i tried less than my body weight. If it is like my bodyweight, wouldn't it be like very awkward?

You shouldn't need assistance for all of your bodyweight. Start with like a 50 pound assist and see what you can do with that.

I also suggest doing some negatives. That is, pull up a bench, chair, or something under the pullup bar. Leap up and pull up at the same time using the power of your legs to get to the top of the repetition, and then lower yourself as slowly as you can.

Also, working on your grip and forearm strength can help a lot with pull-ups.
You can do this many ways but two simple ways are 1) hang from a pull up bar for as long as you can (once you are strong enough you can do them one handed). 2) Another great overall grip strengther is farmer walks (basically pick up two heavy DB's and walk around until your forearms/ hands are screaming for you to put them down. Happy training. Pull ups are worth getting good so plug away and have fun.

Be careful on those negatives i used to do these often but if u do them alot you will feel like shit. Ive been over trained twice both times where when i did negative pull ups. Use em but keep it to like once every two weeks and then go add more freq sessions after like a month.

Originally Posted by Brutus_G

Be careful on those negatives i used to do these often but if u do them alot you will feel like shit. Ive been over trained twice both times where when i did negative pull ups. Use em but keep it to like once every two weeks and then go add more freq sessions after like a month.

When you're fairly new to training it is hard to overtrain like that because you can't call upon a large percentage of your body's resources relatively speaking. It becomes much harder to induce the level of fatigue neccessary to reach a state of overtraining. Good point though; negatives are very stressful on the body.

Is that why after u become more experienced that it takes lower reps to get hypertrophy?

So which is better? Negatives or assissted?

both!!

u could start with assisted and end with negatives

i could always do pull ups but not many at all. got there by sticking with assisteds and just slowly dropping the weight off and working on technique. with lat pulldowns you can do very close to your bodyweight you just use your legs to hold you under the pads that should be on the equipment for exactly that purpose. im 80kg and do 75kg lat pulldowns on occasion.

Originally Posted by dragonoids

So which is better? Negatives or assissted?

Give assisted a try first. If that doesn't work for you in a reasonable period of time, progress to negatives.

Originally Posted by Brutus_G

Is that why after u become more experienced that it takes lower reps to get hypertrophy?

I'm not exactly sure why that is the case. Some of it is just that your body becomes more resilient to resistance training as a stressor; your nervous system becomes more efficient so it is no longer a challenge (Relatively speaking) to activate the motor units necessary to move weights at a lower intensity. Also, it might have to do with the muscle fiber subtype shift to more Type IIA fibers. Your body adapts to doing high volumes of work when you train like a bodybuilder, so it becomes that much harder to stimulate Type IIB fibers (The highest threshold motor units innervate these) to get the work done.

This is all speculation on my part though based on my limited knowledge of exercise physiology, so take it with a grain of salt.