13,064 pull-ups in five months

3. The upper back muscles are hard to overtrain

One of the most important things I learned from my experiment is how resilient the back muscles are to such a high frequency. The upper back muscles tolerate a heavy training load and actually recover surprisingly fast. It was quite interesting to find that I could do, for example, 100 pull-ups on Monday, 101 pull-ups on Tuesday, 102 on Wednesday, and do it without any real exhaustion or lingering fatigue. Don’t get me wrong: in the first week I did feel drained, tired and empty, but after the first couple of weeks my back muscles started to recover and were no longer exhausted. Except for one spot. That is the junction at the back of the shoulder, where the teres major, the latissimus dorsi and the posterior head of the deltoid converge. This spot sits right below the armpit. It is often sore even without hundreds of pull-ups. But when you start doing pull-ups every day, it stays especially sore. It starts to hurt already while you are hanging. During my experiment I did not use any special massage therapies, except for this area. To get at it, lie on your side with your arms stretched out overhead. Use a tennis ball or a golf ball and roll this spot every evening for 2 – 3 x 20 – 30 seconds. At first it hurts like hell, but it releases tightness and stiffness, which in turn makes it easier for fluid and nutrients to reach the area, which in turn means faster recovery.

4. You need to find the pull-up technique that is optimal for your own body structure

In recent years, coaches have recommended a starting position for pull-ups in which your shoulders are not fully stretched out; instead, you keep a slight feel in the lats from the start position, and in the hang the shoulders have not quite moved upward. As a result, you are in a slightly leaned-back position and your arms are also slightly bent at the elbow. In reality, though, the shoulders naturally don’t want to stay in such an artificially pulled-down position, and they don’t need to.

There is another group of coaches who recommend letting the shoulders stretch out as far as possible during pull-ups. They explain that fully stretching the shoulders in the hang allows you to activate the lats and the lower trapezius to the maximum during the pull. You can even find videos recommending that you let your shoulders stretch out fully in the hang and pull yourself up with arms that are almost straight at the elbow. This is of course a way of moving that our body is not used to in real life.

When we pull ourselves up vertically and try to squeeze the shoulder blades together, our elbows inevitably want to flex at the same time. To target the lats directly, the ideal would be to pull yourself up as far as possible using only the squeeze of the shoulder blades, but in practice this is very hard to do, because our nervous system has learned to perform shoulder blade retraction and elbow flexion always together.

In 1997 I attended a seminar where an unknown biomechanics expert recommended training shoulder blade retraction even separately, with locked elbows. A few years later, the expert disavowed it and admitted it had been a completely insane idea. Luckily, the rest of us coaches did not take that advice seriously even then.

So, what position should the shoulder blades be in during the hang? It should be an in-between position: the shoulders should neither be pulled down as far as possible nor stretched out excessively. For the lats and lower traps to be recruited properly, you need to keep light tension already in the starting position in the hang and not let the shoulders stretch out fully. At the same time, you shouldn’t pull yourself so high in the starting position that you no longer feel the lats during the upcoming pull and lose pulling strength. Find the position and movement that work your lats and feel natural to you.

5. Forearm and biceps overtraining definitely won’t be the limiting factor

It may seem that the forearms surely can’t withstand pull-ups like this. True, the forearm muscles were drained and sore in the first week, but after that they adapted quickly to the new conditions.

Even so, I recommend stretching the forearm muscles once a day. Stretch both the wrist flexors and the extensors. Do 2 – 3 sets for each arm, holding the stretch for 30 seconds.

The biceps hardly made themselves felt at all on this “journey”. In the first week they may have felt slightly drained, but then they adapted quickly.

Direct answers to questions if you plan to do pull-ups every day

Who could handle a challenge like this at all?

Definitely a trainee who can do at least 10 pull-ups. If you are someone who can do 1 – 2 pull-ups, you are not weak but rather overweight. Work on that and you will see your pull-ups improve.

How many pull-ups should you do each day?

If you can do a set of 10 – 15 consecutive repetitions, take 50 repetitions as your daily baseline at first. If you are capable enough to do a set of 25 repetitions or more, take 100 repetitions as your daily volume. The idea is really that you do as many per day as you can find time for; you can do more, but that baseline volume should definitely be completed.

I know you said rings would be the best option, but what if I only have an ordinary fixed straight bar?

If you intend to pull up every day, do it on rings or on something that lets your wrists rotate during the pull. If that is not an option, do pull-ups two or three times a week, and even then preferably with a neutral grip (palms facing each other) or a thick handle. On an ordinary bar, don’t even think about doing pull-ups every day.

I can’t pull myself up high enough for my chest to touch the bar. What should I do?

It is common to assume this comes from a lack of strength, but in many cases not reaching the bar with the chest is not a matter of weakness. The cause is more often stiffness in the shoulders and body. Stretch your body, shoulders and upper body.

Should I skip heavy pull-ups on back days?

Definitely, and you will thank yourself for doing so. You can put weighted pull-ups back in later, once you have adapted and become stronger in this exercise.

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Summary

Sometimes you have to do something like this: go against all the principles and do something completely different, new and crazy. It is surely possible to do something similar with other exercises too. I have always been a fan of high-frequency training and of pull-ups. So conquering a challenge like this was only a matter of time. My five-month marathon taught me a lot and showed how far it is possible to go and what we can cope with. On top of that, my back and arms grew. Could anyone have anything against that?

Try it yourself and see what the results are after five months!

Author: Janar Rückenberg (translation)

Source: Turg.Fitness.ee

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