Alternate ways to increase pull-up capacity?

Hi guys,

Did a quick search but didn't find info on this... can anyone suggest alternate exercises that would increase pull-up strength? I don't always have access to a bar and my shoulders have always been an issue as far as strength is concerned.

Thanks in advance. :icon_chee

 

Pull ups are a back exercise.

 

Use a tree branch or door frame?

 

Although I have never used it, I know a large number of people who swear by Pavel T's grease the groove method of dulling pull-ups so do a search and give it a shot

 

Check out the nearest city park -- there's almost certain to be playground equipment you can use for pull ups/chins. You may even find an actual pull up bar.

 

Doorway Pull Up Bar

 

Where is that from? It looks awesome compared to mine...

 

Grease the Groove for Strength: A Strength Training and Powerlifting article from Dragon Door Publications

I've heard of a lot of newbies building strength quickly this way. I think it is tough to do this with heavy compund movements once you get a little strength unless your recovery is spot on.

 

Click de link under de picture, brudda.:icon_chee

 

oh thats easy...



did i mention..
yea bitches love playgrounds
and the woods too

conversly, if u dont like vagina but rather are one then i gotchu too mang..

 

i bought the exact model. it only cost about 12 bucks at Sports Authority. easy to install, and can handle about 300lbs. great thing to have when you cant make it to the gym. an easy way to get better at pullups is to just do a shit ton of pullups. shoot for a hundred a day. doesn't matter how many sets you need, just hit one hundred. then either start shooting for a higher overall count, or just bust them out quicker. buy a backpack and add weights. let me know when you can rep out fifty.

 

If you have exposed floor joists in your basement (or any place else), and its not super low over head you can make a sturdy/safe and inexpensive pull up bar.

Mount a couple of 2 foot long(aprox) 2x4s perpendicular with the joist. Line them up with enough space between them for your hand placement, make sure its nice and wide.

Drill whatever size hole you need for whatever bar your going to use. The tighter the fit the better. Mines 1 1/8''.

Just use a heavy wall conduit such as galvanize pipe available everywhere.

Mount it out of the way as you dont want to be walking into them unless you have a high ceiling. Close to a wall or something, just not in a high traffic area.

I make it sound complicated but if you have any inkling of basic hand tool/building skills its very simple and cheap.

 

Youre a friggin beast.

I am getting better than Ive been. Recently I did 10 consecutive chins for the first time in my life.

I have a ghetto bar as described above but Im looking to build a squat rack like this guy's.



Props to the Sherdogger who built this rack,I dont remember his name. Im gonna pay to have this thrown together, shouldnt cost much really at a local ****l works shop.

 

lol, you guys kinda missed my point. if I can find a bar fine, I'll do a pull up. Sometimes I'm out in butt-fuc* nowhere and would like some ideas when I can't access a tree, playground, home-made bar.

now based on that, anything?

oh, and pull-ups do influence the shoulder muscles... the lats are the main guys working but secondary muscles (rotator cuff/deltoids) are involved.

 

A door frame chinup is a cheap way to go. I have one on the door to my bedroom. Every time I walk by it I do a few pullups or chinups. It's helped a great deal, and I used to really suck at pullups.

 

If you cant scrape up a 2x4 and a piece of pipe, WTF do you want from us? To do the pull ups for you..?

What exactly are you asking for? A magic bar you can pull out of your pocket throw into the air and do pull ups off of?

I dont care where the f*ck you are. Put a f*cking bar where you spend most of your time,( Im guessing this would be where you live:icon_neut) and do the frikkin pull ups

Or you can do lat bar pull downs like my wife does, until you can handle a chin up/pull up.

 

If you really can't find a place to do pullups and you think it's your shoulders that need the most work, do handstand pushups.

P.S. I have no rationale behind my suggestion - I just felt like typing something.

 

thanks for the suggestions...

 

Pushups. My sister could not do a single chinup. Not even part way. She had shoulder surgery and had to try to do pushups for it (nice and slow though, it was major surgery). She got so she could do a ton of pushups--sets of 50 at her peak, and perfect form. Well, she tried a chinup her first day back in the gym and did 3. A stronger back carried over to the other exercise.

Hey, can you do rope climbing? Maybe some trees or a railing you would grab onto?

Once you have your chinup bar, or tree, or whatever, just do as many as you can in a day. Back when I was in high school and had summer vacation with nothing to do, I was averaging around 100 per day and some days of the week came close to 200. I doubt I could do that now, but one day of the week I warmup with a set of 18 or 20 and my weighted chins are my best lift (+75 for sets of 4 and +50 for a set of 10 last night).

For a beginning though, just do as many as you can, even if in really small sets. I can do dips between my dressers and the extra desk here and I stink at dips. So while on the computer at night, after hour or so I get up and do 6 or 8 dips. At first I was only doing 4 at a time. Tonight I did 12. I noticed that my bench got a lot easier at the bodyweight range since I started doing this too. Just more more more volume (same principle applies to both dips and chinups).

 

thanks muerteverde, great suggestions.

I stink at pull-ups... I can crank just under 10 and then my shoulders feel like collapsing. For whatever reason I can't quite recover in-between pull-up sets to crank out a few more, my arms feel dead on the bar after a certain number.

I can't rope climb worth shi*, I do towel pull-ups sometimes but again it's only low rep numbers that I can sustain.

I'm just going to try and add a few every day and see what happens.