Pull Up Power

We have all heard of the pull up yet how many of you use this great exercise in your training regimen? Not as many as you would think is the answer and this tends to be because a lot of people find the pull up hard and cant carry out many reps.

The pull up is a compound exercise that requires upper body strength to lift your own weight. The pull up comes in many forms but the most common is with a pronated grip (palms facing away from the body) and the hands just wider than shoulder width apart.

Pull ups primarily work the Latissimus Dorsi (lats) muscles in the back but use many upper body muscles for assistance.

The interesting thing about the pull up is that is takes a lot of power to carry out and can really help build strength and size in the body through using the exercise in a workout.

When carrying out the pull up correctly you will start with your body hanging with straight arms and then pull yourself up till your head is above the bar and the bar approaches your chest. The pull up is carried out without using any jerking movements such as your legs etc to push your way up. Once you have achieved this you return to the hanging position.

I always finish a back workout with two or three sets of pull ups, carrying out the maximum reps I can on each set to give my back muscles that final push to fatigue.

If you carry out the pull up exercise on a regular basis as part of your training you are sure to see benefits after just a short amount of weeks. By carrying out the exercise at the end of the back workout, like me, and trying as many reps as you can you will see how well you improve.

Don’t be put off if you can only carry out one or two reps initially, the idea is to keep motivated and build up over time until you can carry out three sets of ten or more reps.

A mixture of pull up exercises