thomaslowrens
New member
I was recently thinking about posting this, and since someone else made a post on pullups GTG today, I have decided to post my result too. A video of the reps before and after can be found at the bottom if you don't like walls of text.
In the last few months I was sort of stalling with pull ups and I was undecided about form. This experiment allowed me to find a form that works well for me and improved my pulling overall, and now I feel ready to resume weighted pullup training.
I am age 24, 181cm around 80kg (5'11 176lbs), 1 and a half years of training experience.
I decided to use Pavel's fighter pullup program: https://www.strongfirst.com/the-fighter-pullup-program-revisited/
I chose tuck L sit pullups because my bar is low so I can't keep a hollow body with straight legs, and in the past I felt inconsistent in the amount of knee raise during my pulls, so this way I can be 100% sure I'm not getting assistance from my lower body. They also make the bottom part harder and that's good for me because I felt like I was slow at the bottom.
Having determined that my max was 8, on February 21 I started with 8-7-6-5-4. During the entire program, I spread my sets through the day with 1-2 hour rests, sometimes I warmed up with some shoulder circles or doing a standing unweighted imitation of the movement (starting with elbows behind the body, bringing the arms up until fully shrugged overhead to imitate a passive hang), even without warming up they felt fine but this movement was also useful to imitate the real path of the joints and work on mind-muscle connection.
Every day I added a rep to the sets, so 8-7-6-5-5, 8-7-6-6-5 etc., and after the fifth day (8-8-7-6-5) one was dedicated to rest, and then I restarted with 9-8-7-6-5. A few times during the experience I had to take a rest day during the 5 day cycle because I wasn't always getting good sleep. After reaching 12-11-10-9-9 I felt like I was close to a plateau and since I was already satisfied with the gains I felt it was fine to stop the test. So I deloaded for some days and on March 28 I got 13 reps in a test.
In the end the form I settled on was knees always fully tucked and pointed toes, passive hang at the bottom, explosive concentric, shoulders fully unshrugged (depressed) and elbows tucked and pointing down or slightly behind at the top (around neck at bar height, the last part for chest to bar would require rear deltoid and not lat strength), no pauses and fast eccentric (not so fast that it was uncomfortable for the joints). This tempo is fine according to Steven Low, I asked him about it here.
During the experience I kept a schedule of upper-lower-upper-lower-upper-rest-rest every week, removing pullups from upper body workouts but keeping rows (inverted or tuck front lever depending on light/heavy days), since they did not seem to interfere. I ate more than usual to sustain this volume, but a small surplus sufficed and I gained around 1kg/2lbs and seemed to lose some of it in the deload week. My sleep was not optimal so the recovery could have been better but it was not bad.
Results:
In the last few months I was sort of stalling with pull ups and I was undecided about form. This experiment allowed me to find a form that works well for me and improved my pulling overall, and now I feel ready to resume weighted pullup training.
I am age 24, 181cm around 80kg (5'11 176lbs), 1 and a half years of training experience.
I decided to use Pavel's fighter pullup program: https://www.strongfirst.com/the-fighter-pullup-program-revisited/
I chose tuck L sit pullups because my bar is low so I can't keep a hollow body with straight legs, and in the past I felt inconsistent in the amount of knee raise during my pulls, so this way I can be 100% sure I'm not getting assistance from my lower body. They also make the bottom part harder and that's good for me because I felt like I was slow at the bottom.
Having determined that my max was 8, on February 21 I started with 8-7-6-5-4. During the entire program, I spread my sets through the day with 1-2 hour rests, sometimes I warmed up with some shoulder circles or doing a standing unweighted imitation of the movement (starting with elbows behind the body, bringing the arms up until fully shrugged overhead to imitate a passive hang), even without warming up they felt fine but this movement was also useful to imitate the real path of the joints and work on mind-muscle connection.
Every day I added a rep to the sets, so 8-7-6-5-5, 8-7-6-6-5 etc., and after the fifth day (8-8-7-6-5) one was dedicated to rest, and then I restarted with 9-8-7-6-5. A few times during the experience I had to take a rest day during the 5 day cycle because I wasn't always getting good sleep. After reaching 12-11-10-9-9 I felt like I was close to a plateau and since I was already satisfied with the gains I felt it was fine to stop the test. So I deloaded for some days and on March 28 I got 13 reps in a test.
In the end the form I settled on was knees always fully tucked and pointed toes, passive hang at the bottom, explosive concentric, shoulders fully unshrugged (depressed) and elbows tucked and pointing down or slightly behind at the top (around neck at bar height, the last part for chest to bar would require rear deltoid and not lat strength), no pauses and fast eccentric (not so fast that it was uncomfortable for the joints). This tempo is fine according to Steven Low, I asked him about it here.
During the experience I kept a schedule of upper-lower-upper-lower-upper-rest-rest every week, removing pullups from upper body workouts but keeping rows (inverted or tuck front lever depending on light/heavy days), since they did not seem to interfere. I ate more than usual to sustain this volume, but a small surplus sufficed and I gained around 1kg/2lbs and seemed to lose some of it in the deload week. My sleep was not optimal so the recovery could have been better but it was not bad.
Results:
- Video of the first set of 8 on February 21 and the final test set on March 28 after the deload. More explosiveness, more comfortable movement.
- Trying archer and typewriter pullups. I feel like my strength also slightly increased, since I was unable to do these before. Not perfect form yet since the supporting arm looks slightly bent.
- I got a record of 4 muscle ups, my previous one was 3, but since without kipping I can't skip the false grip transition, my triceps getting stronger could have contributed more than my pulling, although I can pull slightly higher than before even with no kip.
- On November 11 2017 I had managed a chin to bar pullup with a 32kg/70lbs dumbbell between the knees, I was 2kg/4lbs lighter than now. A few days ago I tried 34kg/75lbs (so total weight 6kg/13lbs higher) but only got the eyes at bar height. However later in the recording I noticed I started with the knees in a tuck L, so the bottom part was harder, so I'm not sure whether my true 1RM is higher now, it probably is since I can do archer pullups, I'd have to retry without having my knees raised at the bottom.
