By Pavel Tsatsouline, Chairman
This one is going to be simple. There is only one contender—a hollow position pull-up, strict and heavy.
Tactical pull-up in a hollow position.
Photo courtesy Tony Blauer
Note that “hollow” does NOT mean hollowing your abdomen/sucking in your stomach! The hollow position is a posture from gymnastics designed to maximize one’s strength: tensed and shortened abs, tensed glutes, a tucked in pelvis, flared shoulder blades, and a slightly concave body shape.
The grip is secondary; the posture is primary.
The hollow posture sets up a lat synergy with the anterior muscles—pecs, serratus, abs, and obliques. This type of synergy is used in a great many athletic situations.
Consider gymnastics. All elite ring feats like the iron cross are performed in a hollow position.
Consider a punch from an expert in any stand up fighting art.
Consider two wrestlers facing off. You will not see a puffed up chest and pinched scapulae of a bodybuilder.
To drive the point home, you need to feel it. Jump on the bar and do a few bodybuilding pull-ups—bent knees, a big chest, and retracted scapulae. To exaggerate the effect, cross your ankles and turn your knees out as far as they will go. And use the anatomical breathing match: expand the chest as your going up.
If you have good body awareness, you will notice that the external hip rotation took the load away from the front of the torso, making it stretched and weak, and shifted it to the middle and lower back. An entirely different type of a lat synergy.
Does it mean that this exercise is no good?—No. The bodybuilding pull-up may be a poor choice in the general strength category, where the goal is high carryover to the greatest range of athletic and on the duty or on the job situations, but it has its uses, primarily as a postural correctional exercise.
Studs and duds alike need correctives to stand straight. Athletes from many sports, gun carrying professionals, and people with physical professions acquire what Ori Hofmekler calls the “warrior posture.” You know the look: a slightly sunk in chest and flared scapulae, a mild kyphosis, a neck that does not quite look happy where it is. I remember teaching kettlebell skills to a high level acrobat. His lats could have been folded wings of a pterodactyl; his rhomboids were nowhere to be found…
Which brings us into the correctives territory. We will go there another time, when we discuss rows.
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Love the site. I can do a “bodybuilding” pullup strict with 105# from a dead hang untill the bar touches my adams apple. I tried these hollow pullups with BW, they do feel stronger. I can’t figure out how to do them with a Dip belt and weight. is it possible?
poplawsj, you can and the weight helps if you hang it right—high, at midthigh level—and keep your legs together. Shorten your belt or, better yet, get one from IronMind.
Hey Pavel, thanks for the article. I’m hoping to stick to an efficient Power-to-the-People schedule of working out. What do you think of this simple workout 5 days a week, which shouldn’t take too long? Is it better to stick to the four “best” exercises you recommended and go with a zercher squat instead of deadlift?
2×5 Deadlifts (with 2nd set at 90% of 1st)
2×5 Bench Press (with 2nd set at 90% of 1st)
2 sets pull-ups
Some amount of KB swings
Also, regarding warming up, I understand that with this sort of program it’s better to just start at a comfortably low enough weight that minimal or zero warm-up sets are needed?
Thanks so much for your books and site!
Kostya, looks good, either with Zerchers or with deads.
To ‘warm up’ do a couple of light low rep sets. E.g., if your work set is 315×5, do 135×5, 225×3, 275×1.
What are some cues to teaching the hollow body pullup?
Nick, do a search on the “hollow rock” from gymnastics. Ideally, see an SFG II instructor.
Didn’t you say in the “Best” Press article that you were going to go into why you didn’t divide presses into “horizontal” and “vertical”? I didn’t see anything on that in this post.
Manny, because, if you do them right, you get carryover from one to the other. Adding an extra category just means doing more work and creating more confusion.
Bob, ladders are a great way to bring up numbers, stay with bw for a month or more. At that time, switch to some low rep heavy pull ups, for a while. Pavel, I tried flairing the shoulder blades and it helped, but why is this exactly?
cj, it engages the serratus and other anterior muscles.
Pavel, so with this engaging the serratus and other anterior muscles, do this accomplish putting more of the workload onto the Lats, or is it because the stabilizing muscles are engaging? Great informaion, wish I would have seen this a couple years ago.
cj, I have not seen EMGs to prove it puts more load on the lats but you definitely engage more synergists.
Thanks pavel, so alot of gtg. Due to having a door mounted pull up bar, I can;t go to the full hollow position but flairing my shoulder blades has helped. great post sir
Thanks, Matt!!
Sir. Thank. You. Muscle & Fitness was the dark ages.
Pavel,
Love how you think. Straight to the point, no gimmicks, attention to detail. I do some modest climbing but make a point of staying out of warrior posture. Health > performance. Becoming less fond of pullups and big lats. Psyched on SFG.