One of the most challenging aspects of group programming revolves around one of the simplest exercises: the pull-up. Ever since I started writing group programming in September 2007, pull-up programming has caused me grief. I have tried several different methods of programming and helped many people over the years, but I have never been able to come up with a satisfactory method for dealing with pull-ups at a group level. It was not until I started doing programming for individuals that I began to see just how different the response to training can be in different people and how different approaches are necessary for different people. One of the most common questions I am asked in regard to “extra work”, is what to do to get a pull-up or more pull-ups. Here is an attempt at answering that question.
Today’s article will start with two reasons you might not have your first pull-up (or at least very many pull-ups):
- Strength to bodyweight ratio is inadequate… well, that’s an easy one… you don’t have the strength to move your bodyweight therefore you obviously have a strength to bodyweight ratio issue. So, if your bodyweight comes down and/or your strength goes up you improve your chances of doing a pull-up. The common problem within the scope of the typical CrossFitter is that there are faster methods to get stronger and leaner than doing CrossFit. The reason it used to take women at my gyms up to 2 years to get a strict pull-up was because the typical CrossFit program was not strength-oriented enough. That plus a few other things I’ll discuss below. Before a bunch of you quit our gym for something else (or decide not to join), I’d like to express that a) our “Foundation” program is not in any way like I used to program: many women who put in the work get chin-ups within months of starting; and b) while there are faster ways to get stronger and leaner, you will not have the same spectrum of fitness that is typically demanded or requested of us in our Foundation level programming. All this to say, get stronger (by putting in the training time and frequency) and/or get leaner. Nutrition plays a huge role in both of these aspects. In my experience it is common for women to eat inadequate amounts of protein, inadequate calories from appropriate fat and carbohydrate sources, and excessive calories from sugary carbohydrate sources. In this regard, regularly following the Foundation program (especially on the current arrangement, Tue & Fri) plus making nutritional changes can be your first step toward getting your first pull-up or getting more.
- Inappropriate training of the strength curve. “Banded pull-ups” are one of the main reasons why so many CrossFit women struggle to achieve pull-ups. A band does not match the strength curve of the movement. It provides too much assistance at the bottom, and not enough at the top. The only time I prefer to use bands in training are when strength to bodyweight ratio is so skewed by lack of training that other methods of training are out of reach, or when pull-ups are being used as a conditioning tool. I have considered over the years how inappropriate it can be to use pull-ups as a conditioning tool in a demographic which is extremely weak in that movement (imagine telling someone with a 200# squat to do a “conditioning” workout with 180#… it ain’t gonna be pretty… and if it weren’t for the fact that people have figured out ways to “kip” pull-ups before they are strong enough to mess with that kind of stuff, nobody would be doing this). That is why we do not ever program pull-ups as conditioning in our Foundation program. Therefore, in the Foundation program there are few uses for bands except when strength to bodyweight is very skewed. The other side of this is that when we program “negatives” for training, athletes will tend to drop faster through the sections that are tough for them and work harder at the sections that they are already good at. This takes coaching to address… the athlete has to have this continually pointed out to them because it is human nature to hang out in more comfortable places. My FAVOURITE method of addressing the deficiencies in the strength curve are with partner-assisted pull-ups plus slow controlled negatives. In this method the coach or partner lightly assists the athlete through the pull-up concentric at which time when the athlete is above the bar they hold their chin above bar and then in a slow and EVEN tempo they control themselves to the bottom of the pull-up. My general rule of thumb is that if it feels like I am giving my partner more than 20-25 pounds of help then that is their last rep… if it takes more than that to get them up there on their first rep then there are other methods that can work better for that athlete. All this to say, take the extra step in your training and recruit a partner to help you through your pull-up sets. Reach out to another struggling athlete and help each other get to this milestone faster. This method of training may be effective until you’ve achieved at least a dozen pull-ups (for example, do up to 8 pull-ups by yourself and then have a partner assist you through the last few reps). As for what tempo to use on the way down, there is no one answer… the one observation I would make is that if you were training squats you’d be trying to add weight to the bar each week. Everyone always thinks about pull-ups in terms of reps, but what if you were able to add one second to each rep each session before you added more reps? You might build up to 3 sets of 3-4 reps with 10 second negatives before adding more reps, or perhaps even additional weight.
I could and will go on! As I indicated, it’s not an easy thing to program for in GROUPS. Future instalments will continue to go down the rabbit hole of how I’ve programmed for individuals — both those who are after their first or more strict pull-ups, and those pursuing the movement from a performance standpoint. I will also continue to discuss how you might be able to use those methods in your own training. Stay tuned!
Questions? Email brendan@sublimesc.com.
Brendan Sonnichsen has been a CrossFit coach for over 10 years. There are an estimated 200 women doing pull-ups in the city of Winnipeg thanks, at least in part, to his programming and coaching… and his 3 year old daughter is getting close, too! He writes all these articles off the cuff with kids running around and screaming, so please forgive the lack of formatting!