[00:00] What's up guys, it's Cavalier, AfterNex.com. So as you watch this clip of me performing pull-ups, I want you to take note of one thing. I'm going to perform a bunch of unbroken pull-ups here. And guess what? So can you.
[00:12] As a matter of fact, no matter how many pull-ups you're doing right now, I believe that every single one of us, no matter how big or how small or how strong or weak we might be right now, can do 15 unbroken pull-ups.
[00:24] Some can do even 20, and there's some that can do even 25 or more. That is, if you avoid the six big mistakes, I think most of us make when we perform the exercise. We actually place such a high value on this exercise that we make it part of our AthleanX Games competition.
[00:39] And as you can see here, we have a lot of people, different sizes, men and women, different levels of strength. They're just killing these pull-ups. They know how to do them because they're avoiding a lot of the mistakes. I want to make sure that not just them, but you know exactly what they are so you can avoid them.
[00:53] So let's start diving into them one by one. Don't worry. Even if it's the last thing I do, I'll get that damn pull-up. So the first thing you want to do is make sure you're setting up on the bar properly. Because what a lot of us do is we get loose.
[01:06] And looseness on a pull-up will destroy your ability to do pull-ups no matter how strong you are. So when you grab this bar, a lot of us probably think when we hang from here of just basically pulling straight up. I want you to think of basically pulling yourself back just a little bit.
[01:19] Because what that does is it engages the lat. gets them fired up to be able to do the pulling from here. As opposed to when I'm straight down like this, I'm unpacking my shoulders and I create all this looseness in my shoulder blades.
[01:32] That's kind of tough to overcome when I'm trying to initiate that first pull. It's a lot of wasted energy. And not only that, but it's not pre-setting the lats. So it's making my arms have to do more of the initial pull here, which is going to fatigue far faster than it will be if you just
[01:48] set the lights up correctly. All right, number two, you got to make sure your elbows are in the right place And here again people don do this They don pay attention to it When I say get your elbows out of the cage what I mean is what direction your elbow elbows pointing when you standing directly under the bar or hanging directly from the bar If you can see my elbows when you just to the side of me it because you got them in line with your
[02:09] body and that's a big mistake. Get them out of the cage. In other words, get them out in front. What that does is it puts the shoulder in the shaft of the plane, which is a healthier position for the shoulder and whether you're going to be more optimally positioned to pull with more
[02:21] strength but it puts the lats on a little bit more of a stretch which will also pre-engage the lats as we talked about before and it gets them in that positive position. So if my elbows are out front a little bit it kind of sets up that first tip we already talked about more efficiently and I can
[02:35] pull with a lot more strength because those elbows are where they should be and the shoulder feels a lot better because of it. Number three, you got to plug the energy reach. So I talk about this all
[02:49] the time. The wasted movement is what causes these pulls to become a hell of a lot harder than they are. It's what makes you feel all 200 plus pounds if you are a big person trying to do these. It's what makes even the lighter people feel every single pound of their body weight. But when you
[03:03] can plug the energy leaks, it feels like you're as light as a feather. So what I'm talking about is when you get yourself rigid, not just by setting up the lat, the way we talked about by pushing into the bar, that helps to stiffen up the scapula. But what about the rest of your body?
[03:17] Well, it's really easy to fix and the first thing you want to do is not dangle your feet behind you or cross your knees and let them dangle behind you because that creates looseness. What you might have saw when I was doing my pull-ups is I have my feet out in front of me, my legs together,
[03:31] my feet pointed, my knees straight, my quads tight, my glutes are squeezing, the lats are engaged where I said they are, my core is tight. So what that does is it creates one efficient line of pull.
[03:44] Every bit of force I put down into this bar is going to transfer right through to my upper body and back down to allow me to do these pull ups a lot more effortlessly. I telling you it the most underrated aspect of getting better at pull ups and it something you can do instantly Stop being loose contract every muscle in your lower body through your core you feel tight and you fly up and down on this bar The fourth thing I need you to fix is what
[04:09] you're doing with your hands. Not only do you want to put them at about shoulder width apart, sometimes people go too narrow and by doing that they shift all the load to the muscles of the forearm to do most of the flexion. You don't want that. Get them at least at
[04:21] shoulder width apart but it's the direction of force that matters so much. When I'm about ready to pull myself up. I don't just think about pulling straight down through the bar like that. I think about pulling in at the same time that I pull down. Because what that
[04:36] does is it engages some other adductors of your body. In other words, we know that the chest can adduct the arm into the side. The chest is good at adducting the arm towards midline or pulling in that direction. If we can adduct through the chest this way by squeezing
[04:51] our hands in and of course down we've got both the chest and the lats working together to get me up again that secondary function of the chest to help with adduction is going to make this feel even lighter and it's going to keep some more of those energy leaks from creeping in so i'm here i'm going
[05:07] to pull in and down at the same time so i'm squeezing in at the same time i'm squeezing down i'm not just pulling straight down like that where if you do this and then let go of the inward
[05:19] squeeze you'll instantly feel a lot heavier pull in and down at the same time it's a real game changer mistake number five is having the wrong target point and not attacking the bar with that
[05:31] target and we're talking about is your sternum right at the top of your sternum and what we do oftentimes is we collapse that down all you're doing is increasing the distance between it and your attack point which is the bar what i want you to do instead is try to attack the bar first
[05:46] with your sternum by reaching for it with your chest. Stop trying to reach with your chin. Instead, reach with your chest. So this is what people do when they do it wrong. They start to keep in because they trying so hard Even if you follow the tip by tip of your elbows out in front they trying so hard to get up that they pulling their attack point further away from the bar what I want you to do is lead with the attack point because that will keep you back and tight
[06:10] so when you're here open it up reach for the bar with your sternum you don't have to hit it because obviously your chin should get up and over the bar without having to touch but by reaching that way we're able to create a more effective attack plan with a closer and more direct line of attack
[06:28] that's going to get you to that bar faster with a lot more stability. Mistake number six is not treating the pull-up like any other weighted exercise that you do. In other words, you wouldn't just keep doing push-ups if you want to get stronger at the bench press.
[06:41] So why not add weight to your pull-ups rather than continue to just do more and more repetitions? One of the most effective ways we know to increase strength is to progressive overload. So at some point, strap some additional weight around your waist and start to do some repetitions
[06:56] this way. Because what this will do, I don't care how many you can do, it's going to teach you how to build more strength to be able to get up and perform these exercises. What you can do right from there is do as many as possible and simply drop right into
[07:11] a drop set with body weight and rep out. And what's maybe three reps will become four and what's four will become five and you'll to continue to creep up and up in the amount of weight you can handle, which is just going to increase your overall pull-up strength.
[07:25] Look, I get it, guys. Pull-ups can be tough, but I have high assurance that 15 unbroken repetitions are in your future if you erase these mistakes and you start to train them appropriately. If you're looking for a step-by-step plan, I actually have our pull-up and show-up program available at athens.com.
[07:39] Guys, I promise you'll find this helpful, and the number of unbroken reps you can do is going to go up, up, and up, just like your body on this bar. If you haven't done so, guys, make sure you subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss a video from us when we put one out. All right, guys. See you soon.