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| Bodybuilding Tips - Pull Ups Workout Routine for Muscle Growth |
If you're ready to build strength and a toned upper body, pull ups are perfect. Pull ups are performed by lifting your body up to a bar and lowering yourself down. This bodyweight exercise is not the easiest exercise to perform, but it has major benefits.
By learning and performing pull-ups correctly, it will help you complete multi-joint or compound exercises. These require you to use more than one muscle group and more than one joint. The exercises require a maximum amount of muscle fibers and can help you gain mass efficiently.
Pull-ups are one of these exercises and they recruit:
-Latissimus dorsi.
-Rhomboids.
-Trapezius.
-Deltoids.
-Pectorals.
-Brachialis.
-Triceps.
-Biceps.
Developing strength and form with pull-ups can do strength training exercises including pull-ups, rows and curls. By regularly practicing performing pull-ups, it will help you perform these exercises with ease.
Focusing on mastering pull-ups first will also increase any arm workout, this is due to the accumulated strength and form technique, as pull-ups rely primarily on arm control to perform the exercise.
People tend to start with advanced strength exercises to focus on certain parts of the biceps. They isolate the upper body exercises and forget to develop systematic strength throughout the upper body. This then prevents the surrounding muscles from strengthening and developing.
The pull-up, performed with a neutral or supine grip, is the foundation for building biceps, lats and upper back.
Pull-Ups for pure muscle growth:
There are two problems with most pull-up programs:
1- They usually focus on helping you increase the number of pull-ups you can do, not increase muscle mass.
2- They often require you to modify your regular training program and reduce your training volume or load.
This program is designed for hypertrophy: pure muscle growth. Secondly, it can be incorporated into your already designed workout.
The neutral grip:
Palms face each other, as they do when doing pull-ups with a V-bar attachment or parallel chime bars.
This will put more emphasis on the brachialis. This is an underlying muscle that pushes the biceps up and increases your upper arm.
If your brachialis has been neglected, the introduction of pull-ups will result in an increase in size, even up to an inch in arm size.
Supine grip:
Palms facing you, overloads the elbow flexors and incorporates more muscle, compared to the wide grip, in addition to maximizing a cross section of muscle.
As a bonus, grip strength correlates with arm size. Now you have an inch of new arm muscle mass just waiting to be built.
Program:
Phase 1:
Duration: Four weeks
Method: Volume
Each day you will do several sets of pull-ups. Never go to failure on any set and separate each set by an hour or more.
For example:
Perform a few pull-ups after breakfast.
-One set before you work out.
-Some after your workout.
-One set in the afternoon or evening, etc.
-Use anything that can use or replicate a barbell.
You will accumulate hundreds of extra pull-ups over a 4 week period. Some days you will reach 10 or 20 and other days you will reach 40 or 50. Each week aims for more total pulls than the week before.
Challenge Day:
Once a week, you will set a timer for 5 minutes and perform as many pull-ups as you can with good form. Add that number to your weekly total and take the next day off.
Reps:
If you can already do 12-15 good pull-ups, choose 10 as your target number per set. If you can't do at least 12 pull-ups, you'll need to practice until you get stronger, then return to this program.
Grip Position:
First two weeks: Neutral or semi-supine grip (palms facing each other).
Last two weeks: Supinated (palms facing your face)
Day off:
Once a week, the day after the challenge day, be sure to rest as your body needs to recover, this is so your muscles can grow, but more importantly, you reduce injury.
Here is an example of what your routine might look like:
Week 1 :
Monday: 10, 10
Tuesday: 10, 10, 10
Wednesday: 10, 10
Thursday: 10, 10, 10
Friday: 10, 10, 10
Saturday (Challenge Day): 40 in 5 minutes
Sunday: Off
TOTAL: 160 reps
Week 2 :
Monday: 10, 10, 10, 10
Tuesday: 10, 10, 10
Wednesday: 10, 10, 10
Thursday: 10, 10, 10
Friday: 10, 10, 10
Saturday (Challenge Day): 45 in 5 minutes
Sunday: Off
TOTAL: 195
Week 3 :
Monday: 10, 10, 10, 10, 10
Tuesday: 10, 10, 10
Wednesday: 10, 10, 10, 10
Thursday: 10, 10, 10, 10
Friday: 10, 10, 10, 10
Saturday (Challenge Day): 50 in 5 minutes
Sunday: Off
TOTAL: 250
Week 4:
Monday: 10, 10, 10, 10, 10
Tuesday: 10, 10, 10, 10
Wednesday: 10, 10, 10, 10
Thursday: 10, 10, 10, 10
Friday: 10, 10, 10, 10, 10
Saturday (Challenge Day): 52 in 5 minutes
Sunday: Off
TOTAL: 282
FINAL TOTAL FOR PHASE I: 887 pull-ups in 4 weeks.
Phase 2:
Time frame: Four weeks
Method: Heavy reps
After four weeks, switch to a strength-based pulling program. For the next month, perform the following:
#Step 1: Establish your maximum of 6 reps on the weighted pull-up. Add weight with a dip belt, weighted vest or by holding a dumbbell or plate between your legs.
#Step 2: Perform 25 total reps per workout, using multiple sets with this maximum weight of 6 reps. It doesn't matter how many sets it takes, and it's fine if you're willing to do doubles or singles at the end.
Your 25 total reps might look something like this:
Set 1: 6 reps
Set 2: 6 reps
Set 3: 5 reps
Set 4: 4 reps
Set 5: 2 reps
Set 6: 2 reps
Everyone will be a little different here. Just get 25 total reps with your maximum of 6 reps, taking as many sets as you need. Rest as needed between sets.
When you can easily get more than 6 reps on the first set, add weight.
Step 3: Perform weighted pull-ups in this manner 3 times per week on non-consecutive days for the next four weeks:
- Monday.
- Wednesday.
- Friday.
Vary the grip between neutral and supine. The width of the grip can also be varied to avoid any overuse issues. If three times a week is too rough on your elbows, do twice a week for 6 weeks.
Related Post: 6 best back muscle strengthening exercises!
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