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Fitness: Get more out of your pull-ups with these 4 variations
Summary
Pull-ups are among the best back exercises out there. Here are four variations that will make your pull-ups even more effective
The pull-up is the ultimate closed-chain exercise in the gym for the upper body. One might master pushups and feel like they’ve hit a plateau, but the pull-up will remain as challenging as ever. The exercise has enough variations, and you can always add more resistance to keep it challenging. It hits most of the dominant back muscles, and the biceps and triceps, along with being an important foundation move to make core exercises like hanging leg-raises more doable.
Once you learn how to cleanly pull yourself up the bar, it adds more personality to your workouts. I wrote a story for Lounge three years ago, titled Five Great Pull-up Variations To Get Stronger. The piece included the commando pull-up, the chin-up, Australian pull-ups or inverted rows, and the explosive pull-up. Here are four more you must try to add to your arsenal.
Negative pull-ups: There is nothing ‘negative’ about this pull-up. The name is more to do with how the move is executed. Get a box and start the exercise in a position in which you usually end a traditional pull-up. Which means you are already standing with the bar to your chest. Let go off the box support and suspend the body, slowly returning to a hanging position. So the starting position becomes the ending position and vice versa.
This is excellent for beginners given that the going up part is tougher than the coming down part in a pull-up. The key is to do it slowly, steadily, and with all the muscles engaged rather than just do a dead-hang.
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The L-sit pull-up: Adding an L-sit to your pull-up means your lats are already stretched before you start doing the move. This makes it more difficult to execute and it is probably one of the toughest pull-up variations to learn. Choose from a chin-up grip, or a commando grip (palms facing each other), or a conventional grip. Tip: always go for the grip that you find the easiest. Alternatively, try to hold a hanging leg-raise and see how it feels to understand how the muscles will react to an L-sit pull-up.
“Flexing your hips will change the distribution of weight by shifting your centre of mass forward. To keep it under the bar, you have to open your shoulders further than a standard hang, stretching the lats even more. Alternatively, you will have to generate some active force from the lats to close the shoulders and lean them back," states a video on the YouTube channel Simonster Strength titled L-sit pull ups, why the L-sit makes pull-ups harder and improves gains. You can do this pull-up on horizontal low bars as well, in which you start in a sitting position, so all the force is generated from the lats.
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Close-grip pull-up: I have always wondered whether there’s a pull-up that hits the chest muscles. And while haven’t tried this in a while, reading about it makes me want to add it to chest day. Due to a narrower than shoulder-width grip, the focus on the targeted muscles shifts from the usual.
“This variation effectively shifts the focus from the back to the forearms, biceps, and upper chest muscles. The close-grip pull-up targets the clavicular head of the pectoralis major, which plays a significant role in chest development. Incorporating this type of pull-up into a routine can help strengthen and enhance the upper chest region," states a fitbeast.com article titled What Type Of Pull-up Works The Chest?
The video above, created by the YouTube channel Calisthenic Movement has a thorough explanation of how to do this pull-up. Use an underhand grip, and instead of extending the chest towards the bar, execute the move in a hollow body position, which is by keeping the feet in line or ahead of the bar when pulling up, rather than behind you.
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Weighted pull-ups: It’s not always easy to find someone to stack weights on your back to scale up your pushups. In your pull-up journey though, you can hold a dumbbell between your ankles with the other one suspended with your ankle-grip. That is the easiest way to try adding some weight and it will also get you into the habit of doing strict-form pull-ups given that the feet cannot part while they are holding the weight.
For those who need more weight, there are other ways like using a belt for plates or even attaching weighted ankle straps. The weighted workout vest is easily available as well.
Pulasta Dhar is a football commentator, podcaster and writer.
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