all posts post new thread

Bodyweight Tactical pullup bar to neck or chest finish difficult

Status
Closed Thread. (Continue Discussion of This Topic by Starting a New Thread.)
I find that when focusing on retraction (squeezing shoulder blades together, touching chest to bar) the natural tendency is for the body to want to go into an arched, extended position.

It is much more difficult to retract fully while staying hollow. It’s not un-doable, but the reason I think it’s more difficult is because you are asking the shoulder girdle to do all the work with no compensations from changing posture to make it “easier.” Even well respected, super strong calisthenics athletes will tell you to focus on retracting, but don’t expect full retraction. It’s more about the intent.

I agree with the advice Steve gave. Practice squeezing the position you want at an intensity you can handle. Maybe mix it up with some rows here and there, focusing on tight glutes and a strict hollow position.

If it’s a mobility issue, then it’s a shoulder extension issue. Shoulder extension is trained by virtually no one outside gymnasts. It’s also often the limiting factor when people cannot get a muscle up when they can do heavy dips and pull-ups no problem.

To test your shoulder extension, grab a dowel/stick (something very light!) and hold it behind you with your palms facing forward. Hands should be only slightly wider than your hips or shoulders. Walk face first towards a wall so you cannot lean forward or stick your chin out. Keep your arms totally straight (no bending the elbows!) and see how high you can lift your arms behind you.

I would give vague benchmarks as follows:
-excellent is 90°, arms all the way as high as your shoulders. Very few people can do this.

-good is around 45°

-needs much improvement ;) is anything lower than 45°

You can do this as a mobility exercise. Simply repeat for reps, focusing on external shoulder rotation and a good squeeze between the shoulder blades. For most people a pic pipe will crush them in the exercise.

I am the OP on this thread who had difficulty getting the tac pullup.

Well I am happy to report back three tactical reps this week. I still can't touch the lower chest but now I can touch the chin well under the jawline for a count to standard. I had been doing the things below and realized that I have not tried touching the chin for quite a while so I tested it this week.

I can't prove it but here is what I think helped because there were others on this thread asking about this.

@Benjamin Renaud

Maybe those more knowledgeable can agree or disagree with what I chose.

1. Should extension exercise as recommended above by @bluejeff. Did them during breaks working at the computer. Did regular shoulder dislocations before bed. Overall shoulder health better. As he says, training shoulder extension is rare except for gymnasts. Almost everyone should do this one.

2. Switched out regular pullups for feet elevated inverted rows as my main pullup regression. Very underrated exercise in my opinion. The perfect complement to a pushup program. It was recommended as the best regression to chest to bar pullups.

3. I read an old article from Pavel and realized that in my attempt to touch the bar with the chest, I lost the tension in my hollow hold position. Pavel describes a sunken chest, not an big chest. Look at his form here: The Fighter Pullup Program Revisited | StrongFirst As bluejeff mentioned, and as Kenny Croxdale has recently mentioned in another thread, having an internal cue of chest to bar may have gotten in the way rather than helped. Visualizing going over a wall as an external cue may be better (that it is why it is called a tactical pullup because it is a regression to a muscle up position). Brett Jones has this visualization cue in an article and also to put the grip slightly more overhand.

4. I read somewhere that the pec minor plays a role in closing the distance, so I started doing chest dips, which are said to target this. Also, this give practice in holding your entire bodyweight. Another reason for this is that all the tactical strength challenge exercises are very posterior chain dominant, so I have been neglecting chest/pushups lately.

5. Isolation holds in the top position of the dip. This really helped build arms and core. It is a gymnastics exercise. Just hold the hollow body position in the dip position. Like the hardstyle plank, your core will be shaking. All straight arm work really hits the biceps, which are secondary muscles in the movement.

6. Scapular pullups for warmups and cooldowns and lat activation practice.

7. Gironda pullups neutral grip singles to try to get chest to bar and build lats.

8. Hanging leg raises, bar hanging for time as my cool down as grip work.

9. I am not used to the thumbless grip so that might have taken time.

10. A slightly wider bar grip was more comfortable on the shoulders.

11. Pulling elbows in and back cue.

12. More attention to a micro pause for scapular activation and tension building before initiating the movement.

My next step, I will do sets of two with a two second pause at the bottom and a pause at the top (Steve F. tip) to make sure I can meet the TSC standard (master's category). The results from the pullup in the master's category are interesting. There are some impressive numbers in the top 12 and then the numbers seem to drop right off. Those that have decent pullups after that don't have the deadlift numbers.

Next my snatch needs work. Deadlift step cycle (Deadlift Dynamite book) on track to peak with a PR.

Thanks for the tips and forum support.
 
Last edited:
I have read somewhere that explosive upsidedown rows aiming chest to barwill help with chest to the bar pullups. I have done some googling but cannot find the same web page again. Anybody able to comment on that idea ? Seems to me that the final arm position would be very similar for both exercises ie fists at chest level and elbows driven behind back.

Same basic idea. I did inverted rows (Australian pullups).
 
Same basic idea. I did inverted rows (Australian pullups).
Karen Smith has a video where she says " Do not look at the bar, keep your gaze straight ahead and when your eyes are level with the bar breathe out TSSSS and explosively drive the elbows back whilst continuing to pull. Then in the video she does it ( but Slowly ! quite interesting) Will see if I can find the video here it is the relevant section approx 2:03

There is also the One Good Rep series of Articles worth a look One Good Rep: How to Perform the Perfect Pull-up | StrongFirst looks like the same video.
 
Last edited:
Karen Smith has a video where she says " Do not look at the bar, keep your gaze straight ahead and when your eyes are level with the bar breathe out TSSSS and explosively drive the elbows back whilst continuing to pull. Then in the video she does it ( but Slowly ! quite interesting) Will see if I can find the video here it is the relevant section approx 2:03

There is also the One Good Rep series of Articles worth a look One Good Rep: How to Perform the Perfect Pull-up | StrongFirst looks like the same video.


I got the eyes front cue from some material by Aleks Salkin. If you look up you can leak tension from the hollow position.

I have seen this video before. However, I may be using the elbows back due too early, so this deserves a review. Thanks.
 
Karen Smith has a video where she says " Do not look at the bar, keep your gaze straight ahead and when your eyes are level with the bar breathe out TSSSS and explosively drive the elbows back whilst continuing to pull. Then in the video she does it ( but Slowly ! quite interesting) Will see if I can find the video here it is the relevant section approx 2:03

There is also the One Good Rep series of Articles worth a look One Good Rep: How to Perform the Perfect Pull-up | StrongFirst looks like the same video.

Just what I needed today. It's amazing how far you can drift from the "right" technique when you are focusing on more reps.
 
I got the eyes front cue from some material by Aleks Salkin. If you look up you can leak tension from the hollow position.

I have seen this video before. However, I may be using the elbows back due too early, so this deserves a review. Thanks.
Two thoughts (I got a little carried away on this one. . .):

-Both looking up and extending the shoulders (elbows behind body) have a tendency to induce back extension/"rib flare," which is the opposite of the hollow position. Shoulder extension seems to commonly produce the unconscious movment of pushing the ribs forward at the same time.

-If you are indeed driving the elbows back too early, it may be, as you noted, leaking tension from the hollow position. If you are losing the hollow position and are thus in an extended position, you essentially are placing the shoulders in the position you want them to go before you actually go there, so there's no place for them to go. You can't go into a range of motion that you are already in. Another way of saying this is that you can't pull the arms behind the body as far if they start behind the body.

I also would NOT pull the scaps down before pulling with the arms, for the reason I just outlined. If you pull the scaps down first, you are losing range for the shoulders to move through, and you are de-coupling the scapula from the humerus. The scap and humerus are meant to naturally move in tandem.

Instead, just focus on your hollow position (ppt, engaged core; ribs stacked above pelvis, not flaring the ribs) and drive the elbows down and back. Also, I believe that if you keep the elbows close to the body you bias the lats more (When I do pullups this way my elbows come kind of close to my hips. Your proportions may be different). The lats are bigger and might give you more leverage to pull stronger. If you arch the back and/or allow the elbows to come out wide, you will bias the upper back more. I'm sure I don't need to go into how the upper back muscles are smaller than the lats :)

A way to practice this movement using horizontal rows is to push down with the bottom of your feet into whatever they are on. Instead of just putting the heels on a bench or whatever, slightly bend the knees so that you can push downwards with the balls of the feet or the whole foot. You might have to put your feet on the edge of the bench to get a comfortable position. This should light up your hamstrings. If the hamstrings engage, they will help keep your pelvis posteriorly tilted, which is something you need for all of the above :)

A side note:
I have noticed a number of bodybuilding coaches on social media going on about how the pull up is not the best exercise for the lats because it supposedly targets mostly the upper back. I have wondered if they realize that a hollow position pullup actually hits the lats more than the supposed "perfect pullup" you see some people promoting that emphasizes arching/retraction at the top of the pull. To conclude, I think that any style of pullup serves a purpose. Understanding which style involves which muscles more is helpful in choosing the one you want to do and when.
 
I also would NOT pull the scaps down before pulling with the arms, for the reason I just outlined. If you pull the scaps down first, you are losing range for the shoulders to move through, and you are de-coupling the scapula from the humerus. The scap and humerus are meant to naturally move in tandem.
Something to ponder here for me.
 
Something to ponder here for me.
I used to think that being sure to engage the scapular muscles first would create stability or something. These days, I am much more of the thinking that if your skeleton is aligned decently well for what you're doing, the body should just be allowed to do what it wants to do naturally.

Obviously it is person-dependent. Some people might benefit from scapular pullups to "wake up" those muscles, however, I think we ultimately should be aiming for movement that feels pretty natural.

Lastly, before I write another essay. . . I would just add that when I say "I don't think you should pull the scaps down first," I don't mean that you should necessarily go to a totally dead hang between reps. If it feels okay for you, sure. If it bothers your shoulders to dead hang, just keep a mild pull at the bottom. At least that's my current two cents.
 
Two thoughts (I got a little carried away on this one. . .):

-Both looking up and extending the shoulders (elbows behind body) have a tendency to induce back extension/"rib flare," which is the opposite of the hollow position. Shoulder extension seems to commonly produce the unconscious movment of pushing the ribs forward at the same time.

-If you are indeed driving the elbows back too early, it may be, as you noted, leaking tension from the hollow position. If you are losing the hollow position and are thus in an extended position, you essentially are placing the shoulders in the position you want them to go before you actually go there, so there's no place for them to go. You can't go into a range of motion that you are already in. Another way of saying this is that you can't pull the arms behind the body as far if they start behind the body.

I also would NOT pull the scaps down before pulling with the arms, for the reason I just outlined. If you pull the scaps down first, you are losing range for the shoulders to move through, and you are de-coupling the scapula from the humerus. The scap and humerus are meant to naturally move in tandem.

Instead, just focus on your hollow position (ppt, engaged core; ribs stacked above pelvis, not flaring the ribs) and drive the elbows down and back. Also, I believe that if you keep the elbows close to the body you bias the lats more (When I do pullups this way my elbows come kind of close to my hips. Your proportions may be different). The lats are bigger and might give you more leverage to pull stronger. If you arch the back and/or allow the elbows to come out wide, you will bias the upper back more. I'm sure I don't need to go into how the upper back muscles are smaller than the lats :)

A way to practice this movement using horizontal rows is to push down with the bottom of your feet into whatever they are on. Instead of just putting the heels on a bench or whatever, slightly bend the knees so that you can push downwards with the balls of the feet or the whole foot. You might have to put your feet on the edge of the bench to get a comfortable position. This should light up your hamstrings. If the hamstrings engage, they will help keep your pelvis posteriorly tilted, which is something you need for all of the above :)

A side note:
I have noticed a number of bodybuilding coaches on social media going on about how the pull up is not the best exercise for the lats because it supposedly targets mostly the upper back. I have wondered if they realize that a hollow position pullup actually hits the lats more than the supposed "perfect pullup" you see some people promoting that emphasizes arching/retraction at the top of the pull. To conclude, I think that any style of pullup serves a purpose. Understanding which style involves which muscles more is helpful in choosing the one you want to do and when.

No need to apologize for the length and detail. It is appreciated.

I think I meant more about locking in the tension before initiating the lift rather than isolating the scaps. Not letting the shoulders shrug. It may be my misuse of terminology getting in the way. However, I will have to think about this more as like the elbow cue, my timing might be off and thereby wasting energy. I think Karen says in the video somewhere about max tension for one good rep and then managing the tension for multiple reps after that. I will have to experiment with this tonight. I will focus more on the hollow position and neck well over the bar that should take care of things as you said. Part of the breakthrough for me was looking at the picture of Pavel's posture and how hunched forward he was rather than chest out.

That is an interesting point about shoulder position.
 
From teaching many Bodyweight Certs over the past decade, I have found that most people who can not reach the bar to neck or chest are lacking mobility in shoulders, and t-spine. I would be happy to help assess if you guys would like to send me a video. Just email me your videos at karensmithmsfg@gmail.com
 
Status
Closed Thread. (Continue Discussion of This Topic by Starting a New Thread.)
Back
Top Bottom