How to do more pull ups

So how many pull ups can you do? Five? Ten? Fifteen, maybe? Would you like to be able to do more? Perhaps you’re thinking about the Bar-barians challenge, which involves 20 pull ups. Or maybe you’d just like to be able to rattle out more than your training partner at the gym, while the treadmill honeys are looking. Well, rest assured, it’s only a matter of time and effort. You just have to do more pull ups more often.

Part of the series

Before we get started, though, don’t forget that this is the fourth in a series of five articles on pull ups. So don’t miss the previous articles in this series:

Introducing pull ups and chins - why they are a good idea and how to do them
What to do if your shoulder hurts doing pull ups – it may not be the end of the world
Pull up variants – pronated grip, supinated grip, neutral grip, wide grip, narrow grip and elbow flexor pull ups

Basic principles of doing more pull ups

The basic principles are:

you need to do more pull ups;
you need to do pull ups virtually every day; and
you need to avoid training to failure.

If you can follow these principles, then you don’t really need to follow a written programme. Some people get good results from putting a pull up bar in the kitchen doorway and getting into the habit of doing a couple of reps every time they go past. They get good results. Other people follow a rigid programme over several weeks. They get good results too.

So what’s the science behind it?

The goal of these principles is to create muscular efficiency by constantly exposing the muscles to the same movements over and over again. You won’t get bigger (and you won’t really get that much stronger either after you go over about 12 reps) but you will get a lot better at doing pull ups. It’s very similar to the way that cyclists train for endurance races, like the Tour de France. Most of their training is easy spinning in low gears and for long (like 5 or 6 hours) rides. They then top this up with short sprints and other types of training before races.

Example programmes

If you’re the programme type, here are a couple to get you going. They are all designed to keep you from training to failure but with the aim of getting plenty of pull ups done. If you fancy using one, try to give it a couple of weeks to do the job and then switch to another method. I tend to cycle workouts every 4 weeks to keep things fresh and you won’t lose out by doing that here.

Programme 1: morning and evening

Day 1: test yourself – find the maximum number of reps you can do (e.g. 10 reps)
Days 2 – 6: do 1 set of your maximum number of reps less 1 (e.g. 9 reps) in the morning and 1 set in the evening
Day 7: rest

Programme 2: 1o minute sets

Day 1: test yourself – find the maximum number of reps you can do (e.g. 10 reps)
Days 2 – 6: do 1 set of half your maximum number of reps (e.g. 5 reps) on a minute for 10 minutes. If you get all 10 sets, add a rep (e.g. 6 reps).
Day 7: rest

Programme 3: ladders

Day 1: test yourself – find the maximum number of reps you can do (e.g. 10 reps)
Days 2 – 6: do 1 set of 1 rep, then a set of 2 reps, then a set of 3 reps and so on until you get to your maximum number of reps less 4 (e.g. 6 reps). Do each set on 45 seconds and then come back down again.
Day 7: rest

Programme 4: cluster sets

Day 1: test yourself – find the maximum number of reps you can do (e.g. 10 reps)
Days 2 – 6: do 2 reps and pause for 5 seconds, do another 2 reps and pause for 5 seconds. Repeat this until you reach your maximum number of reps. Then take 1 minute rest and repeat 2 more times for a total of 3 sets of (5 x 2) reps.
Day 7: rest

Final tips

A couple more tips:

some people find that their grip is one of the things that causes them to fail when doing higher reps, so you may need to work on that to improve your overall numbers. Some good places to look for advice on grip strength are Diesel Crew and Ultimate Grip.
watch your form on the last reps of each set and be aware that bad form can cause you to develop shoulder or back pain. Refer to my last article about what to do if your shoulder hurts doing pull ups if this happens;
if you wake up in the morning and you’re sore after doing pull ups the previous day, don’t hesitate to take a day off. This isn’t about making the muscle sore. If you make the muscle sore then you aren’t achieving the required goal. We are looking for efficiency not muscle growth.
if you find that you aren’t getting enough rest in one of the programmes, increase the rest periods. We’re not looking for heart health here!

Chris Beardsley's Garage Gym