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Bodyweight What’s the best way to improve pull ups and chin ups?

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miwkeini

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I could barely do 2 pull ups and 3 chin ups on a good day. I’m lean at 6’0 and 170 lb, I don’t have much weight holding me down. I’ve been working out for the past year on and off I'd say. I heard lat pull downs help (I can do 130 lbs). I can do 15 military push ups in one sitting (not sure if that helps or not). Another thing for me is that my wrists are small, I think I have more bone weight or something. I do curls often and it for some reason always feels like I'm kind of maxed out or something (I can only do 30 lb on each arm, with my max probably between 35 and 40).
My goal is to pretty much to get to 3x10 reps in about a month, not sure I’ll actually get there but I’m definitely going to try.
 
There is only one way. Doing them.
GTG. Get a pull up bar in your flat and do them every time you underpass the bar. Don't max out each time. If two is your rep max than do only one.. Do as many of them as possible through out the day. Rest periods between sets - the longer the better. 10 - 15 min.
Try handstand push ups.
I heard that reverse pull ups are good for beginners. Stand on something elevated and hold the bar in the end position and than slowly go down. Do those until you eventually can pull up.
Never tried resitance bands. But I don't think you need them..
When I want to build up I do pyramids.
1 Pull up - rest, 2 pull ups, rst, 3 pull ups rst. -repeat
same with chin ups.
As for wrists... Try wrist curls with a small weight. 5-8 kg. A small kettlebell is good. Kneel down, put your elbow on your thigh and take the kb in your hand like a tumbler and rotate round and round - left and right.
Hold your arms straight out and make fists. Plenty of those.
Grip technique is another point. Don't put the thumb around the bar. Just claw with four fingers.
Just my 2 cents
 
miwkeini said:
I could barely do 2 pull ups and 3 chin ups on a good day. I’m lean at 6’0 and 170 lb, I don’t have much weight holding me down. I’ve been working out for the past year on and off I'd say. I heard lat pull downs help (I can do 130 lbs). I can do 15 military push ups in one sitting (not sure if that helps or not). Another thing for me is that my wrists are small, I think I have more bone weight or something. I do curls often and it for some reason always feels like I'm kind of maxed out or something (I can only do 30 lb on each arm, with my max probably between 35 and 40).
My goal is to pretty much to get to 3x10 reps in about a month, not sure I’ll actually get there but I’m definitely going to try.
Click to expand...
@spc gave some reasonable advice.

What might not be reasonable is 3 x 10 in a month considering your current baseline. But don’t let that stop you from trying.
 
miwkeini said:
I could barely do 2 pull ups and 3 chin ups on a good day. I’m lean at 6’0 and 170 lb, I don’t have much weight holding me down. I’ve been working out for the past year on and off I'd say. I heard lat pull downs help (I can do 130 lbs). I can do 15 military push ups in one sitting (not sure if that helps or not). Another thing for me is that my wrists are small, I think I have more bone weight or something. I do curls often and it for some reason always feels like I'm kind of maxed out or something (I can only do 30 lb on each arm, with my max probably between 35 and 40).
My goal is to pretty much to get to 3x10 reps in about a month, not sure I’ll actually get there but I’m definitely going to try.
Click to expand...

Back off on the curls, you are tiring out a muscle needed for the chin-ups. Push yourself consistently on the lat pulldowns, using a chin-up grip. A lot of people have done those until using bodyweight and then moving to chin-ups. Keep doing the chin-ups, but don't kill yourself - do just 1 or 2 reps until that starts feeling easy.
 
+1 to gradually increasing the weight on the pull-downs, and +1 to the advice on backing off on curls. There's no need to do supplementary work if you're still working on improving basics.

My two cents:

-If you like to train at the gym using the lat pull down machine, just gradually add weight to it. An extra option here is to do 1-2 sessions per week of just the pull downs, and then 1 day of eccentric (negative-only) chins. Do 3-5 sets of 1-3 negatives. Aim for each negative to get close to 10 seconds. The negatives are a powerful stimulus, so don't go crazy with them right off the bat.

-If you have something to hang from handy throughout the day, then greasing the groove may be a better option. Just do submaximal sets (in your case just a rep or two) throughout the day. The key here is that you should always feel fresh.

- One more option is to use body rows, either off of a bar, rings, TRX etc. Keep the body absolutely straight to make the appropriate muscles work. Build to something like three sets of ten or even five sets of ten. You could either do just rows combined with some hanging work, or you could alternate higher rep row days with lower rep chin up days. Building lots of volume at "easier" exercises in similar motor patterns can help a lot with the harder ones.
 
Quite likely I’m going to be the odd man out here… but I don’t like the use of a pull-down machine to improve pull-ups. Mainly it doesn’t allow the body to be used in a fashion that closely replicates pull-ups. If a person wants to do pull-ups then do them. Yes, I know… sometimes easier said than done. Negatives work very well. GTG works very well. But what really is slick is a pulley counterweight system. This allows one to micro-load (if you’re into that kind of thing). Just add or subtract weight to the system until you reach the desired results.

The catch is that you need a pull-up area that has some headroom and high attachment points to rig your pulleys.
 
offwidth said:
Quite likely I’m going to be the odd man out here… but I don’t like the use of a pull-down machine to improve pull-ups.
Click to expand...
I agree. I bought a used power rack that came with a lat pull down attachment, which I have never installed.

-S-
 
miwkeini said:
I could barely do 2 pull ups and 3 chin ups on a good day. I’m lean at 6’0 and 170 lb, I don’t have much weight holding me down. I’ve been working out for the past year on and off I'd say. I heard lat pull downs help (I can do 130 lbs). I can do 15 military push ups in one sitting (not sure if that helps or not). Another thing for me is that my wrists are small, I think I have more bone weight or something. I do curls often and it for some reason always feels like I'm kind of maxed out or something (I can only do 30 lb on each arm, with my max probably between 35 and 40).
My goal is to pretty much to get to 3x10 reps in about a month, not sure I’ll actually get there but I’m definitely going to try.
Click to expand...
As you mentioned you are at a good bodyweight, so that should not be an obstacle. If you are at 2-3 reps right now, then in my opinion you just need general strength rather than a specific pull up program. In fact, I think a specific pull up program could do more harm than good right now since your strength might not be developed enough to tolerate it. My advice would be to follow any "general strength" program that sounds appealing to you and work to build overall strength - the chin up numbers will improve as your overall strength improves.
 
1. Practice practice practice. If you can't do many reps, practice slow negatives
2. Bodyweight rows

Last year I practice "grease the groove" chin-ups, which took me from 12 to 19 in no time. I took a rest from the movement and probably lost some reps. Then i did the fighters pullup program for a few weeks and hit 22 reps.
 
miwkeini said:
I could barely do 2 pull ups and 3 chin ups on a good day. I’m lean at 6’0 and 170 lb, I don’t have much weight holding me down. I’ve been working out for the past year on and off I'd say. I heard lat pull downs help (I can do 130 lbs). I can do 15 military push ups in one sitting (not sure if that helps or not). Another thing for me is that my wrists are small, I think I have more bone weight or something. I do curls often and it for some reason always feels like I'm kind of maxed out or something (I can only do 30 lb on each arm, with my max probably between 35 and 40).
My goal is to pretty much to get to 3x10 reps in about a month, not sure I’ll actually get there but I’m definitely going to try.
Click to expand...
When that was my limit, I did sets of 1 pull-up - with the goal being 10-15 singles, stopping when the reps stopped being perfect. Then I started including doubles, until I was doing 10-15 easy doubles. Then I started including triples... Once I could do 10 sets of 3 fairly easily, I started doing different things, like the Russian Fighter Pull-up program Old Man Edition. What's OME? Its where I follow it M-W-F and take a 1 month program and turn it into a 2.5 month program. Why did I do that? Cause I couldn't handle the pace.
 
I did something similar to @John K a couple of years back with chin-ups. 8-12 singles per day with plenty of rest between singles, I could only do singles at the time. Then I did doubles about 6-10 sets. After 8 weeks I tested my max and it was 8 chin-ups.

I ended up with elbow pain though. Make sure your body is prepared for daily work if you do GTG. Maybe doing some active hangs daily to prep the elbows. 3-5 sets of 15-30sec.
 
Here's what I believe:
  • Assistance stuff (lat pulls, bands) don't work. They never seemed to help me. Pull-ups are much more of a full-body movement than some people give them credit for.
  • Accumulating volume works. If you can only do sets of 2, do as many sets of two as you can recover from.
  • For assistance work, focus of strengthening the wrist and elbows. Wrist pronation, wrist curls, finger extensions with a band, fingertip pushups. That's the sort of stuff that allows you to accumulate more volume (see step 2).
  • Core work helps (planks, hollow holds, TGUs). It's easier to focus on pulling if you aren't worried about your ability to hold tension and protect your spine.

That's my $0.02, at least
 
offwidth said:
Quite likely I’m going to be the odd man out here… but I don’t like the use of a pull-down machine to improve pull-ups. Mainly it doesn’t allow the body to be used in a fashion that closely replicates pull-ups. If a person wants to do pull-ups then do them. Yes, I know… sometimes easier said than done. Negatives work very well. GTG works very well. But what really is slick is a pulley counterweight system. This allows one to micro-load (if you’re into that kind of thing). Just add or subtract weight to the system until you reach the desired results.

The catch is that you need a pull-up area that has some headroom and high attachment points to rig your pulleys.
Click to expand...
Yup. I was pulling everything on the stack for reps and also using fatgripz and guess what? I still utterly blow at chins and pull ups lol
 
I don’t think there’s any real substitute for just grabbing a bar and banging out as much volume as you can. I’ve read about Australian pushups and using ring rows etc but they have never got me anywhere. Right now I can do 5 pull-ups. As I said earlier, utterly beasting the lat pull down, even using fatgripz on it did nothing for my pull-ups. If you aren’t built for it it’s going to be a long slog but that’s the joy of it right there is it not? Pulls and chins don’t get the respect they deserve and folk don’t do them as they are just beastly if you suck at them. And that’s a good thing. I think your goal in your time period needs adjustment but just do them. My reps have slowly creeped up since using certain climbers implements that can be hung from a chin up bar, balls, cylinders, pinch hubs and finger devices. I’ve used GTG in the past and it got me nowhere. Right now I just do chins or pull-ups 2-3 times a week as part of a workout and my reps are getting better. Just keep at them regardless. The road is better than the inn as someone once wrote.
 
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