Have you ever tried... doing pull-ups?

Like, a lot of pull-ups

It’s literally never been more important for you to be physically fit. Achieving even a moderate level of fitness puts you far ahead of the average person in our society. Being in good shape doesn’t just make you stronger, it helps you sleep better, reduces your stress, and even sharpens your mental acuity. If you don’t take good care of your body, you’re really failing yourself and everyone around you. Good things are contagious.

Due to the magic of the internet, there is more workout and nutrition advice available at your fingertips right than there’s ever been in human history. Speaking from experience, having so many options can often seem intimidating. Amateurs don’t know where to start so they don’t start at all. I don’t pretend to be an expert at this stuff, but I can suggest a good place to begin:

Pull-ups. Lots of pull-ups.

Pull-ups are an incredibly important motion that activates your back, shoulder, and arm muscles simultaneously. It even helps your core. If you do pull-ups regularly, you’ll feel stronger, look better, and (perhaps most importantly) have a better base to work off of for other exercises. You can also do them with just a simple door-frame pull-up bar (less than $50), no gym or extensive time commitment required.

Here’s the best instruction video I’ve found on how to do a proper pull-up. Technique is extremely important in preventing injury. I hurt myself doing sloppy pull-ups a few years ago and even though I can do pull-ups once again I still feel it literally every day.

Just as important as technique in preventing injury is incremental improvement. It takes a lot of time to get good at anything. Your body can adapt to what you throw at it, but it’s sensitive. If you put it through too many unfamiliar motions in too short a time, it’s gonna break and you could end up in a worse position than when you started.

The best program I’ve found for incremental improvement in pull-ups is the Russian Fighter Pull-Up Program. This method was popularized by martial artist and bodybuilder Pavel Tsatsouline, though I don’t think anyone knows who actually created it at this point.

Here’s what the program looks like if you start with a 5 pull-up max (taken from Pavel’s website, which I recommend you visit). You do one set of your max, then another set of one less repetition, and then so on afterwards for five sets, gradually adding more to the later sets each day. If you do this regularly, it’s almost impossible for you to not to improve the number of pull-ups you can do. The system is adaptable to whatever your current max is, though when you get farther along you the number of reps per later set should drop off substantially.

Russian Fighter Pull-Up Program

Day 1     5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Day 2     5, 4, 3, 2, 2
Day 3     5, 4, 3, 3, 2
Day 4     5, 4, 4, 3, 2
Day 5     5, 5, 4, 3, 2
Day 6     Off
Day 7     6, 5, 4, 3, 2
Day 8     6, 5, 4, 3, 3
Day 9     6, 5, 4, 4, 3
Day 10    6, 5, 5, 4, 3
Day 11    6, 6, 5, 4, 3
Day 12    Off
Day 13    7, 6, 5, 4, 3
Day 14    7, 6, 5, 4, 4
Day 15    7, 6, 5, 5, 4
Day 16    7, 6, 6, 5, 4
Day 17    7, 7, 6, 5, 4
Day 18    Off
Day 19    8, 7, 6, 5, 4
Day 20    8, 7, 6, 5, 5
Day 21    8, 7, 6, 6, 5
Day 22    8, 7, 7, 6, 5
Day 23    8, 8, 7, 6, 5
Day 24    Off
Day 25    9, 8, 7, 6, 5
Day 26    9, 8, 7, 6, 6
Day 27    9, 8, 7, 7, 6
Day 28    9, 8, 8, 7, 6
Day 29    9, 9, 8, 7, 6
Day 30    Off

If you can’t do any pull-ups at the start, just use a chair to take some of the weight off and allow you to complete the general motion and build strength. The goal should be 5 perfect pull-ups before you start the program.

Here’s Pavel’s suggested program for people who have a 3 rep max. Especially early on, it’s important to focus on technique. You want to have the strength required to do a perfect pull-up before you start, not just force yourself into a vaguely similar motion using momentum.

Day 1     3, 2, 1, 1
Day 2     3, 2, 1, 1
Day 3     3, 2, 2, 1
Day 4     3, 3, 2, 1
Day 5     4, 3, 2, 1
Day 6     Off
Day 7     4, 3, 2, 1, 1
Day 8     4, 3, 2, 2, 1
Day 9     4, 3, 3, 2, 1
Day 10   4, 4, 3, 2, 1
Day 11    5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Day 12    Off

Some general advice for people just starting out:

• Rest days are really important, maybe more important than the actual workout days. They allow your body to fix itself. If you don’t get enough rest, you’re bound to injure yourself and even if you don’t, you’ll end up weaker than you would have been otherwise. Strength gains require consolidation. After the end of one month of doing the program, give yourself two or three extra days of rest just to allow your body to fully heal. It really does make a difference

• You want your motions to be as controlled as possible. You should feel tension when you’re both pulling up and lowering yourself down. Both of those motions are an important part of pull-ups and neglecting the latter will leave you in a very bad spot. It’s the actual muscle activation that allows you to build stronger, not just going through the motions

• Get enough sleep. I’ve already written about this before, but sleep will improve every part of your life and especially your workouts. If you’re not getting 8 hours of sleep or more, fixing that should be your number one priority

• EZ mode for improving pull-ups is just losing weight. Daily walks, improving your diet, it’s all easy to do and you have literally no excuse not to, anyway

• When you’ve hit a plateau on pull-up reps, try doing the same (or even a smaller) number of reps but slightly weighted (they sell special belts to allow you to do this)

Again, I’m not an expert, but I hope that this simple thing helps you like it helped me. It’s truly tragic how many people today go through life in a haze, never knowing how good they could feel or strong they could be. You deserve better!