How to do your first pull up

This will guide you on How to do your first pull up!

We’re going to cover a variety of topics in this article around the topic of pull ups:

• The Fundamental Problem
• Factors
• Strength vs Skill
• The Kipping Pull Up
• Strength to Bodyweight Ratio
• Training
• Specific Considerations for Women

Recommended Pre-Reading:

• What is Strength Training?
• What is the NLP?

The Connor Green Podcast:

I have made a podcast out of this topic as well! It mirrors the article, with some of my own spontaneous commentary put in. The main benefit of the article is that I can update it, whereas I can’t update the podcast. I’ve already updated the article several times since filming the podcast… really, you should read the article and listen to the podcast for best results!

Without further ado…

The Fundamental Problem

The fundamental limiter in doing a pull up is strength. If you are strong enough, you can do a pull up – regardless of any other variable. But, there are some constraints, for example, no one can develop unlimited strength, and even if they could it would require unlimited development of body weight. Taking into account the most important variable (strength), and the most important constraint (rate of strength development relative to bodyweight), pull ups become an issue of strength to bodyweight ratio. The stronger you are, the more you can weigh and still do a pull up. But, this is a double edged sword – so on the other hand, more you weigh, the stronger you have to be – which is not always a favorable progression.

In order to do a pull up, you have to generate enough force to overcome your body weight, and only slightly. If you weigh 200, and can pull with 201lbs of force (for long enough) you can do a pull up. Obviously, we’re tasked with increasing the amount of force we can exert (the definition of strength) while taking into account that the more we weigh, the higher that force requirement is. If we can maximize our force production, and minimize the force required (ie, lower bodyweight), we increase our chances of completing a pull up.

A really good proxy for “strength” in this case is the deadlift. It will give you a good indication as to how strong your pulling muscles are – they require significant hand, forearm, arm, lat, and back muscle strength to complete. If you perform the deadlift correctly, the exact same muscles you need to be very strong in order to perform a pull up, are being developed extremely well. As I’ll expand on, being a great deadlifter extends to pull ups and all other areas of strength/athleticism, just being good at pull ups means just being good at pull ups.

Quick Preface: Pull Ups for Women

97% of this guide will apply to everyone regardless of gender. Here is where it differs: if you are a biological female doing a pull up will be very hard. Unless you are athletically gifted (in which case, you wouldn’t need this guide), it will take significant dedication. We’re talking working through significant physical development, and of course, the frustrations that come along with doing anything very difficult – like fighting the desire to quit, or to start questioning if you should change goals.

University of Dayton study recruited 17 female students that couldn’t do a pull up, but were still “fit”. They put them through the ringer for 3 months with the sole goal of pull ups, and at the end only 4 could do one. The main conclusion: even young women with a fitness baseline above average really struggled. (You can read the abstract here. I had to request the full text directly from the authors. If you want it, email me. Disclaimer: I hate most of the exercise-phys literature, but I can give credit where credit is due.)

It will take dedication not only to doing the appropriate training consistently, but also to getting high quality sleep consistently, eating a diet that supports building muscle, managing your stress, and long term thinking.

Here’s the good, amazing, wonderful thing about this goal though: once you get a pull up, two, three, four, five + are VERY close by. Once you get over the hump, it becomes significantly easier to start knocking them out, and enjoying the fruits of all your labor! Additionally, once you have the ability to do a pull up, even if you don’t train them or fall off, if you try to get them again it will be significantly easier than what you had to do to get them the first time.

Pull ups for women are an extremely worthy and noble goal, an incredible accomplishment – and nothing says “badass” like a woman that can do strict pull ups in the gym.

Candidly, pull ups aren’t the same level of accomplishment for men, and it’s not really even close. In our gym especially, it is VERY common to see women out squat men, and by a lot. I just taught a Group Strength and Conditioning class with 2 members that signed up at the same time, and each been at the gym for 5 years, and both have trained extremely hard. The workout was squats, and strict pull ups.

Man: 5ft 10 aged 49, weighs 180 *squatted 3×5 @225*. He has improved significantly in the gym. *Does 9 strict pull ups*

Her: 5ft 2, aged 35, weighs 170 *squatted 3×5 @210*. She has improved significantly in the gym. *Can’t do a pull up* BUT she did get 90% of the way, so *almost does a pull up*.

Despite the biological advantage, the woman in this case is literally almost as strong as the man, and MUCH stronger when you account for her being female and him being male. But he can knock out pull ups, and she can’t. Why is that?

Well there are several reasons that I will continue to expand on, but the biggest factor is that she is female. With exactly her same numbers, but if your turned her into a man, she would be able to do pull ups.

Ladies, you cannot look to your male counterparts and be frustrated at their progress. Of course you can be frustrated – but this frustration usually comes from “we both did A, and he got pull ups and I didn’t.” You have to remember they are playing an entirely different ball game when it comes to pull ups. This doesn’t mean you can’t do them – you can – and it doesn’t mean you can’t beat your male counterparts – you can – the path is just going to be harder. I MIGHT expand on this in a separate article – but the male advantages for pull ups literally, LITERALLY start in-utero at around week 6 of pregnancy.

With that said – if you have decided to embark on the journey to your first pull up, I want to help you get there – no matter who you are. Keep reading.

Factors to Consider

There are several important factors to consider when it comes to this:

• Age – being younger is generally better (with all things athletic).
• Bodyweight – being lighter is generally better.
• Bodyfat Percentage – having a lower body fat percentage is generally better.
• Limb length – having shorter limbs is generally better.
• Height – being shorter is generally better.
• Overall strength – being stronger is better.
• Strength to Bodyweight Ratio – being strong relative to your body weight is better.
• Sex/Gender – being male makes achieving them easier.

Will I Ever Be Able to Do It?

I can say pretty damn confidently, that the answer is yes. It might be out of some people’s range, but with enough dedication the great, vast majority of people will be able to do at least one.

With that said, you need to be realistic about the amount of work it is going to take you given the factors above, and you need to train and eat according to your situation. If you are 22, reasonably light, have a low body fat percentage, are on the shorter side, have short limbs, are very strong, and male, you very well may be able to go to the gym the first day and do a pull up.

If you are 42, overweight, not very strong, tall, with long arms, and female, you are going to have to really work hard to get one – but you still can – but for this person, it’s going to take dedication; it won’t be something you can do for 5-10 mins per 1x/week and achieve. We’ll talk more about the best way to accomplish this later in the article! But first an expansion on… women.

Crucial Point in the “Factors” Listed Above

You might notice what is NOT in the “factors” – and that is “skill”. That is because strict pull ups are not a skill. They are limited, ultimately, by strength, and thus not a skill you can practice. This is where MANY people go astray and never get things correct: you can’t just “practice” strict pull ups until you get them. I’m going to break this paragraph here to illustrate the differences between strength and skill, and then return to this point, and then I’ll address the elephant in the room: the kipping pull up.

Differences Between a Strength and a Skill

A strength is limited by strength. A skill is limited by your skills – otherwise stated as your brain’s ability to tell your body to do something. Skills are largely neurological. Of course, you can lack both the strength and the skill to do something.

For most practical applications, people lack strength more than they lack skill, and strength takes longer to get than skill. If you can’t lift your couch, is that because you aren’t skilled enough? If an elderly person can’t get off of the toilet, is that because they don’t have the skill? We could ask this same question and get the same answer for almost every practical application of fitness you can think of: the skill is there. The strength (or another physical ability) is not.

A strength is something that you train, and you CANNOT just “do more” of it and increase the rate of increasing strength. There is a human physiological speed limit at which you can gain strength, and doing more strength training beyond that point results in overtraining, and ultimately plateauing, injury, and/or getting weaker.

Skills are something you practice, and you CAN just “do more” and get better faster – in fact, for most skills, there isn’t an upper limit to the amount of time you can spend doing it while getting better.

Take dancing, playing the piano, or double unders – you can practice them for hours and hours per day and you will get better at them faster, and faster. If you practice piano 10 hours per day you will get better faster than the person that practices 1 hour per day – as long as that person is not a phenom, which is exceedingly rare.

Remember if you want a guide on how to do your first pull up, we’re talking about strength, not a skill.

Crucial Point in Factors Pt. 2

Some people will inevitably say, “Well I practiced pull ups 3x a week until I got them” – but this is really a semantics issue. You might think you are “practicing” but really, you are doing some kind of strength training, and through that you got stronger until you were able to do a pull up.

A further way to make this point clear – if you can’t deadlift 600 is that because you don’t have the skill, or because you’re not strong enough? If you can do a deadlift with a PVC Pipe correctly, you have the skill to deadlift 600 – you just don’t have the strength, and like almost everything in the gym, the strength is much harder to get than the skill. The main take away from this paragraph: you don’t lack skill, you lack strength, and more specifically the strength to bodyweight ratio required to do a pull up.

This Applied to the Kipping Pull Up

The kipping pull up is a skill with a low-strength prerequisite. This is similar to billiards – you need some strength to be able to strike the ball and hold the cue effectively, but once you have that prerequisite strength, it’s about skill. For kipping pull ups, this is because the force that carries you above the bar is generated by your legs and core, not the strength in your back and arms.

Before I ever heard of a kipping pull up, I could do 15 strict dead-hang pull ups. It took me about two 1 hour practice sessions by myself (no coach) to learn how to do kipping pull ups. This was so easy because of the strength I already had pre-developed.

From that point for 4 years, I was hooked on kipping pull ups, at one point being able to do more than 50+ in a row. During that time I put on zero muscle in my hands, forearms, arms, and back. Why? Because I was getting REALLY good at the skill of kipping pull ups, and that was the limiter once I had the baseline strength for kipping pull ups – which I had before I even tried them. As I went from 5 to 10 to 20 to 50 pull ups, I wasn’t getting stronger, I was getting more skilled at generating force with my core and legs to get my chin above the bar.

Strength is the ability to produce force. (More reading here.) If you weigh 151lbs, you need to produce 152lbs of force with your arms and back to do a pull up. If you change this equation, and add 20lbs of upward force from your legs, now you only need to produce 132lbs of force with your arms. This doesn’t make you stronger, it makes you more skilled at making up the gap with your legs.

After coaching 1000s of people in the kipping and strict pull up, these are typical kipping stories:

• Been a member for 7 years, can do 20 kipping pull ups and zero strict -this person doesn’t have the physique of someone that can do 20 (because they can’t do any) – and ALWAYS wants more muscle/more toned arms and back despite doing many kipping pull ups every week.
• “Practices” kipping pull ups 3x/week for 2 years, and eventually can do 3 or 4 kipping pull ups and no strict pull ups. This person is a screaming example of an incredible work ethic with incredible inefficiency.
• Focuses on strict form – can do 3-5 and then learns how to do kipping pull ups in 1 week, and then easily accumulates 15-20 within a few weeks.
• Comes into the gym with 10 strict pull ups already. Learns a kipping pull up in 10 minutes.
• Person frustrated they are stuck on developing a strict pull up, starts learning how to kip and skips to the finish line of “I can do pull ups”, and despite this, doesn’t get the strength or muscle advantages of being able to do strict pull ups. This person also usually isn’t interested in getting much stronger or losing weight but still frustrated they are stuck. *shocker*

Now is the time I want to note very clearly: I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST KIPPING PULL UPS. I’ve taught 100s people how to do them, I’ve done 10s of 1000s, and I’ve never seen someone get hurt doing them, despite what many critics of CrossFit say. (I do think you’re at higher risk of injury from kipping without the strength of strict, but I haven’t personally observed that).

The reality is clear: kipping pull ups do not build strength, and therefore do not build muscle. If kipping pull ups do make someone stronger, it is because they are weak to the point that they don’t have the pre-requisite strength of doing one – but that doesn’t mean they should do kipping pull ups to gain that strength, as it will be ineffective, and plateau almost immediately. Imagine: you do not physically have the strength to skate, but someone says “well I got stronger from skating anyway, eventually I could skate”, therefore skating is strength training and builds muscle. It doesn’t.

If you got stronger from skating, it was ineffective, and the strength gains will stop almost immediately, and if you could say, meet the minimum strength to skate – which everyone in the world does if they can walk – then it would have never been strength training for you.

If I didn’t have the hand strength to play the piano, but decided to start practicing the piano anyway and I observe my hands got stronger – that is only because of an extreme weakness to start off with – that doesn’t mean playing the piano to get stronger is a good idea.

Apply this to double unders, shooting a basketball, anything handstand related, or any other skill. If you can’t do a kipping pull up, the fastest way to get good at them is to get stronger – (Notice I said, “good at them” – not yank out 2-3; I mean becoming very proficient) – not to practice kipping pull ups all the time. As you get stronger, you’ll accumulate muscle, tone, and the ability to easily learn kipping pull ups. Or you can bias kipping pull ups and attain a marginal level of strength improvement, getting kipping pull ups, lots of soreness, and minimal muscle gain.

But Connor – what about the soreness I feel in my arms and back afterward? It’s funny you should ask; I’m currently writing the seminal article on why soreness DOESN’T correlate to results(it may become a book); in the case of the kipping pull up, soreness is generated not through a strength gaining process, but by a large amount of force that was generated from the legs, above one’s own body weight being lowered and slowed with significant force beyond what that person has the strength to do (which is why the momentum must be generated by the legs in the first place).

The force is generated not by the tissues that have to slow the body, but by the legs and core, which are much stronger that what the arms/back can lower without significant muscular damage. If you need further proof think about how strict pull ups hardly generate any soreness, but generate significant strength and muscle gains.

Anyone that does strict pull ups can tell you – and I’m one – at the time of this writing I am 263lbs, and I recently managed 10 strict pull ups with zero soreness – video below. (As a side note, I’m going to tick down to 242 for an upcoming powerlifting meet – I’ll probably be able to do 15 or 16 at that time – 1) because I’m strong, and 2) because I will lose weight and pull ups will be easier).

Just state your goal and decide what you should do for yourself, (assuming you can’t do a pull up yet):

A) My primary goal is to be really good at kipping pull ups because they’re fun, challenging, I can get a great conditioning workout, and I want to compete in CrossFit.

B) I want to get stronger, lose fat, and build muscle and get toned as soon as I can.

The irony here, is in the vast majority of cases, working on your strict pull ups as the primary goal is the best way to get A, and working on strict pull ups is always the best way to get B.

The only real case for A practicing kipping pull ups is if they already have the prerequisite strength to be good at them… in which case, you wouldn’t be needing this article since you’ve already got 10+ strict pull ups. You’d be looking for the article on maximizing your kipping pull ups – which would largely be an article about kipping as a skill, NOT strength training or getting your first pull up.

Theory Applied

If you couldn’t tell – I obviously wanted to dig deep into some of the fundamental principles involved in this, vs just giving some motivational reading and a sample program. The next thing you’ll want to do is read a few of the examples below, and start trying to apply some of the information above to people you know and/or yourself.

I want to illustrate how simple it is to be able to tell if a person can do a pull up or not – these are intentionally genderless, ageless, heightless, etc.

With that said, let’s look at a few theoretical (based on real people) examples:

Person A: Bodyweight: 250lbs. 1RM Deadlift: 200lbs. They can’t do a pull up. Period. You don’t need to know any other information – male/female, age, limb length, body fat percentage, etc – absolutely, positively nothing. That person cannot do a pull up.

• This person can do pull ups 7x/week and they will never be able to do a pull up, ever. Increasing the amount of time spent doing something pull up related will be largely wasted. This person needs to do 2 things: lose 50lbs, and add at least 100lbs on their deadlift. A body weight of 200 and a deadlift of 300 puts them in position to be successful. More specifics about this person can help give better recommendations (for example, a woman needs to lose 100lbs, and a man needs to add 200lbs to their deadlift).

Person B: Bodyweight: 200lbs. 1RM Deadlift: 250lbs. They might be able to do a pull up. In this case, you would need some more information to make a determination – but you wouldn’t be able to be sure. It’s more likely they can do a pull up if they were 5ft 8in, than if they were 7ft tall – the shorter person in this case would benefit greatly from a reduction in limb length. If this person was a man they would benefit from having a lower body fat percentage than a female with the same body weight/deadlift, but again, you couldn’t be sure if that person could do a pull up. It’s really 50/50.

• One pull up session per week for this person is beneficial – MAYBE 2. Again, specifics would help determine what this person needs to do, but as a general rule – this person needs to lose weight, and add weight to their deadlift.

Person C: Bodyweight: 150lbs. 1RM Deadlift: 250lbs. They most likely can do a pull up. A man with those stats can do one up with 99% certainty. A woman is VERY likely – 80% or more possibility. Individual factors would matter – easier for a short arm person, a shorter person more likely than a taller person, but overall, that person will be able to do a pull up.

• This person needs to train pull ups. 1x-2x/week of a pull up strength training variation and this person will have pull ups in short order. At the same time, they might consider dropping a small amount of bodyweight, and of course, always adding some strength on the deadlift.

Person D: Bodweight: 135lbs. 1RM Deadlift: 270lbs. They can do a pull up. Period. No other information required. Very likely this person can do 10+ pull ups.

• Notice the way the equation changes. This person can walk into the gym on day one and do a pull up, even if they have never, ever done one. Training pull ups will help take them to the next level.

Person E: Bodyweight: 250lb. 1RM Deadlift: 500lbs. This person can do a pull up. No questions asked. Very likely, this person can do 10+ pull ups.

• Same situation here – if this person has never tried a pull up, they would be able to do one on their first try.

The main take away here is simple: if you have good body composition (ie, a lower body fat %) and you have a strong deadlift, you can do pull ups. The same cannot be said the other way around – if you are lean, can do pull ups, but don’t train the deadlift, you won’t be good at it. The next conclusion flows beautifully: if you want to get them, then you need to get leaner, get a strong deadlift, and occasionally train pull ups when appropriate for your level of strength to bodyweight ratio.

Strength to Bodyweight Ratio

This is by far the most important factor in determining your ability to do a strict pull up. Basically, if you can deadlift twice your body weight, pull ups will be easy for you. You can even do them on the first day if you’ve never even done one. (Notice, how if you are strong enough you can do a pull up with out practicing at all? This is even further evidence that it is not a skill. How can something possibly be a skill if you don’t need the slightest bit of practice to do one? Good luck doing a handstand walk without any practice. (ie: that’s impossible, because handstand walking is a skill).

How to Improve your Strength to Bodyweight Ratio

If you are overweight, you need to lose weight and get toward a 2:1 deadlift to bodyweight ratio. You should go about this by attacking the low hanging fruit. For example, if you are a 200lb female with a 200lb deadlift. What should you do? Well, you could try and get a 400lb deadlift – but that will likely include gaining more weight, and then you’ll need an even higher deadlift. OR you can work on losing 50lbs, and making small improvements in the deadlift – say getting to a 230 deadlift. Doing that + 1x/week strict pull up training gives you a hell of a shot at strict pull ups, and later, if you desire, 20+ kipping pull ups with minimal practice.

If you are skinny, you need to get stronger and gain muscle and gain weight – gaining weight in this case will be the only way to meaningfully change your strength to bodyweight ratio. For example, if you are 100lbs with a 100lb deadlift, that is as 1:1 ratio. You will be much more likely to be able to do pull ups if you weigh 115lbs, but with the added muscle you can now deadlift 200. For a ratio of 2:1.15.

Strength to Bodyweight: Specific Considerations for Women

This is the other place where my advice differs for men and women: women should bias losing weight in order to improve their strength to body weight ratio, vs adding strength. Adding strength is still a primary component, but top end strength potential for women relative to body weight is not nearly as high as men. (A concept called neuromuscular efficiency, something we can expand on in another work.)

Take the example of the woman I listed above that is as strong or stronger than many men – she weighs 170, is very strong, squats 3×5 at 210, and deadlifts 250, and *almost* did a strict pull up. What is more practical: improving the Strength/Bodyweight ratio significantly by becoming a 340lb deadlifter, or losing 20lbs? The truth is, she is so close to a pull up, losing 5-10lbs, and keeping the same deadlift will most likely result in a pull up. OBVIOUSLY, dropping some body fat is the way to go.

Conversely, if this exact person was a man (they would most likely be able to do a pull up with the same exact numbers, but if they couldn’t do one yet), we would recommend staying the same weight and shooting for a 350lb deadlift in the near future. Why? Adding 100lbs in the deadlift for a man is a reasonable, realistic, and typical result of normal training. Doing that for the woman listed may be a realistic result, but not without significant dedication, and 2 more consistent years of training.

FINALLY – If you can’t do a pull up, here is how to do your first pull up:

1. Take the steps necessary to get as close to a 2:1 deadlift to body weight ratio as possible.

Here are the steps necessary to get as close to a 2:1 deadlift to bodyweight ratio:

1. Increase your strength.
2. Decrease your body fat.

And that’s it. But, like many things, for many people the answer is too simple, and the work too hard. Don’t fall into the trap – when you get stuck on the basics, don’t try to find other things to work on – instead double and triple down on the basics.

A quick ratio guide:

100lb deadlift, 200lb person. 1:2

150lb deadlift, 200lb person. .75:1

200lb deadlift, 200lb person. 1:1

300lb deadlift, 200lb person. 1.5:1

400lb deadlift, 200lb person. 2:1

500lb deadlift, 200lb person. 2.5:1

Take your deadlift (say 100) and divide it by your weight (say 200). You get the first number, .5, relative to your weight, which is represented by 1. So 100deadlift and a 200lb body weight is .5:1.

For most people – meaning over 70% of Americans, this primarily means losing weight, while maintaining or building some strength. For some people, it means gaining muscle (and thus weight) to drastically improve their strength.

Now we can get to some of the nitty gritty of how you should train.

Training for Your First Pull Up:

First note – the training for someone that is overweight or underweight is exactly the same.

For training, primarily, you need to do deadlifts. Take wherever you are and get much stronger. How much stronger you need to get obviously depends on your height, weight, current deadlift, etc, but rest assured: you need to get your deadlift up. You can do this by following the Novice Linear Progression, or by just deadlifting a 5×5, or 3×5 or 1×5 a week for the next 20 weeks and beyond. Yes, it’s that simple. Remember: if your deadlift is good enough, you’ll be able to do pull ups without ever trying to do a single pull up.

The lats, hands, forearms, and arms are worked in the deadlift in a way that produces significant strength and muscle gains that you need for pull ups. Several other benefits of the deadlifts are: you can do them no matter what shape you start in (not the case for many exercises), they create a full body stress helping you build muscle and burn fat like nothing else, they are incrementally loadable – meaning you can start at whatever weight you need to and add weight at the perfect rate. (This is a problem with bands, for example, you go from 150lbs of band help to 50lbs with no in-between.)

Pull Up Specific Strength Training

I hesitate to put “Pull Up Specific Strength Training” in this because it’s a waste of time for many people. It doesn’t matter how many times per week you try and do pull ups, if you weigh 660lbs it’s never going to happen. Obviously that’s extreme – but the point stands – if you are a 200lb person, you’re not getting a pull up without committing to a 400lb deadlift – reasonable for a man, and still possible, but less so for a woman.

Here’s a few examples:

• Ring Rows – you can do these 2-3x/week as they aren’t very stressful and you can make them harder by making yourself more horizontal to the floor, and eventually add weight.
• Bands – you can do pull ups with bands. These are a great option, but they have limitations. For example, every band is different and helps each person differently depending on their height and weight AND bands make the easiest part of the movement even easier, while making the hardest part of the movement – where people need help – even harder (Read: the top is hard where the band doesn’t have tension, and the bottom is very easy where the band has the most tension).
• DB Bent Over Rows, Barbell Bent Over Rows, T-Bar Rows, other rows – these work all the same muscles as the deadlift and in very similar ways, but generally without the lower body component, which makes them great! (Single Arm DB Row against a bench shown)

• The Lat Machine – This is a great option that I wish could be applied to classes. The machines are very expensive and very heavy. A lat machine allows the user to sit, and pull down on a bar that mimics a pull up bar, and then select a weight to lift. This allows them to precisely select the right weight and progressively overload the movement. On top of that, they use cables, so the resistance is the same as at the bottom.
• Holds – you can jump to a position of the pull up, and hold yourself there as long as you can.
• Negatives – jump into a position of a pull up and lower yourself slowly.

The application of these exercises is simple – deadlift 1x/week, and on another day of the week rotate 5×5, 3×5, 3xMax Efforts – occasionally a test – like a 5×1 – of these things and focus on progressively overloading them – doing a little more weight, more reps, or making them a little harder this time than last time. Do that repeatedly.

Example Program:

Monday – Deadlift 5×5, then 2×12 DB Bent Over Row, add 5-10lbs to the dead, and 2.5-5lbs to the Rows each week

Thursday – 5×5 Banded Pull Up, 5th rep of each set perform a slow negative – decrease the bands and increase the negative time each week.

There are an infinite number of combinations of training you can do – it is extremely important to remember there is no silver bullet. There is no magical exercise or program. There is only building muscle and losing fat, and doing that effectively will eventually result in pull ups.

Make sure to progressively overload – add weight/remove assistance – each week. Repeat this for 12, 16, 20+ weeks in a row. Unless you have exceptional dedication to your diet, sleep, hydration, and stress management adding a third or fourth workout is a complete waste of time – and still probably a waste of time even if you do. Of course, you could Bench/Press on Tuesday, and Squat on Friday – I’m just illustrating the way your pull up strength work would integrate into your week.

Pull Up Diet for the Skinny

If you are already lean/skinny and can’t do a pull up, then you need to gain muscle. If I say “gain muscle” no one cries. If I say “gain weight” everyone loses their minds. The truth is that you need to gain weight and it is impossible to only gain muscle – you will always be adding, water, glycogen, bone density, tendon/ligament thickness, etc. So – you need to gain weight, and in gaining that weight you will achieve a more muscular physique, and the ability to do pull ups.

Follow a sample training plan like what I put above, and use these general rules for your nutrition:

• Body weight in grams of protein per day – if you weigh 150, eat at least 150g of protein. If you are especially skinny bump it up to 1.25-1.5g/protein per day.
• Double body weight in grams of carbs per day – if you weigh 300g, eat at least 300g of carbs per day. Do 2.5-3g/carbs per pound if you are especially skinny.
• 50% of your body weight in grams of fats per day – if you weigh 150, have at least 75g of fats per day. If you are especially skinny, do 1x body weight in grams of fats per day.

For 150lb skinny person:

• 150g/protein, 300g of carbs, 75g of fat.

As long as you are training and progressively overloading your training – adding weight/removing resistance each time you train – you will gain lots of muscle, and eventually, probably very quickly, be able to do pull ups.

Pull Up Diet – In General

You need to eat a diet that helps you gain muscle and lose body fat. For most people, the emphasis here needs to be on losing body fat. This is not “gym specific” or “North Hollywood specific” this is United States specific – over 70% of adults are overweight, so there’s a good chance that you fall into that category.

I’m not going to do an entire treatment on nutrition for fat loss here – although, my plan is to write a separate article on that some day – I will cover some of the basics:

• Track your food faithfully. You cannot be successful without this. You don’t have to track forever – but long enough to become very good at it.
• Make your own food. At LEAST 80% of your food needs to be fresh food, prepared by you. Nutrition labels are allowed to be off by 20% and compound that with the fact that tracking apps are often off by an additional 20%; eating prepackaged foods is extremely difficult. You know what you can be 100% confident about? The 8oz of chicken you made is actually 8oz of chicken.
• Eat your body weight in grams of protein per day. This is what is required to build and maintain muscle mass.
• Eat in a caloric deficit. You have to burn more calories than you consume. A deficit of 500 cals per day will help you lose 1lb per week. This will be for another time – but you can calculate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) with a free calculator online, and then eat 500 cals less than that.

Do the above for as long as it takes – rest assured, it will take much longer than you want or think. If you can accept that and commit to following the process, you will eventually accomplish your coveted pull up!

In Closing:

Almost everyone will be able to do a strict pull up – and shortly thereafter many repetitions – with the correct approach, which includes eating, sleeping, hydrating, and stress management. For men, this will be easier and less meaningful. For women, this will be harder, but a much more noble pursuit and a great accomplishment!

I’ve attempted to write the most thorough, and thus helpful, treatment on pull ups that there is. I hope I have gotten close to this and answered almost all, if not all, of the questions you have. If you have questions, or need any help at all, please reach out to us! Advice is always free. Hit that contact button, or email us directly at [email protected]

Thanks for reading,

Connor

PS, I may return to this article several times over the next weeks and months and edit/update this to make it better. Check back!