Your First Pull-up Is Just the Beginning.
“Being able to do a pull-up” is a common fitness goal, and if you practice diligently—doing negative pull-ups, inverted rows, and more—you’ll eventually achieve it. Celebrate that! But don’t give up on the workouts you were doing before you learned how to do a pull-up.
It’s tempting to change your workout routine because for weeks, months (maybe even years!), you’ve been doing what you do when you can’t do a pull-up. Maybe you’ve been doing negative pull-ups, where you start at the top and slowly lower yourself down. Maybe you’ve been doing inverted rows, pulling yourself up to a low bar or rings. Maybe you’ve been doing machine pull-ups, pull-ups with a decreasing resistance band, lat pull-downs, bent-over dumbbell rows, and more.
But your first pull-up isn’t a stepping stone to the next level. Don’t forget about resistance bands and lat pulldown machines. They should stay with you through the next stage of your journey.
Why you might be having trouble doing pull-ups.
So, you did a pull-up today. That doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do it tomorrow. This might be confusing, so let me explain. We all have a range of what we can do on any given day. For example, if you squatted 225 pounds last week, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to squat 225 pounds today. You could say your “range” is 200-225 pounds, and when you’re well-rested and positive, you can reach the upper end of that range. But even on a bad day, you know you can at least lift 200 pounds.
Pull-ups are pretty much the same thing. Perhaps when you started training, your strength was 50-55% of what it should be. This means that when you do your first pull-up, your strength level might be around 95-100%. The day you did it, you were at 100%. The next day, you might only be at 99%. You’ll wonder why you can’t do another pull-up.
Now you need to keep training until doing one pull-up becomes your limit . If you can do 0-1 pull-up, expand that range to 1-3 pull-ups. By the time you can do two or three pull-ups in one day, you’ll be able to do one pull-up every day.
By the way, everything I’m saying also applies to pull-ups. (When doing pull-ups, your palms face away from you; when doing pull-ups, your palms face toward you.) Pull-ups are a bit easier than chin-ups, so if you can do occasional pull-ups, you can probably already do pull-ups fairly regularly. Feel free to combine pull-ups and chin-ups in your workouts.
How to do a second pull-up
Doing your first pull-up doesn’t open up a whole new world of training; it simply gives you an additional tool. You already have a variety of exercises you do to develop pull-up strength, and you can perform these exercises with varying rep ranges and difficulty levels. To this, you can add “do one pull-up.” One pull-up isn’t enough to replace everything else.
If you need a refresher on the best pull-up accessories, here they are:
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Negative pull-ups (slow lowering). You can perform several reps of these, or aim for each set to consist of one very slow movement, for example, 10 or 15 seconds.
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Pull-ups with a resistance band (use a resistance band supporting your legs—either suspended from a bar or stretched across a rack beneath you). You can do more reps with a heavier band or fewer reps with a lighter one. It’s best to perform these exercises slowly and with control.
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Pull-ups on a box or bench , placing one or both feet on the surface below you. Push off with your foot just enough to complete each rep.
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A lat pulldown machine or a assisted pull-up machine . Both train the upper body muscles responsible for pulling, although they are not as effective for training the core muscles or proper body position.
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Pull, pull, pull ! My favorite exercise is the Kroc row, which uses dumbbells so heavy that you have to “cheat” by twisting your entire body (which is good because it engages your core). Other great pulling exercises include barbell rows, seated cable rows, bent-over dumbbell and kettlebell rows, and bodyweight reverse rows. After you’ve completed your other pull-up exercises, do a few sets of rows.
Your pull-up routine probably included other exercises, such as planks and other core strengthening exercises, grip training, hanging from a bar, or even shoulder stretches. Continue doing these as well. If you were only doing one or two exercises from the list above, feel free to add one or two more.
You don’t have to do every exercise. I would choose one pull-up variation each day—negative, band-assisted, or bench-assisted—and then add two more exercises from the rest of the list (one machine and one deadlift, or two different deadlifts).
How to do more and more repetitions
That one pull-up you can do at least occasionally? Make sure to do it at the beginning of your workout. Do one pull-up, rest for a minute or two, then try again. If you don’t succeed, move on to the rest of the workout—negative pull-ups, rows, and so on.
If you can do more than one pull-up per day, you’re close to being able to do two or three pull-ups per set. If the pull-up feels comfortable, try a second rep. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to do sets of two or three pull-ups.
Once you can consistently perform at least three pull-ups, you can make this exercise the foundation of your workouts rather than just a nice bonus. Perform three sets of three pull-ups every day during your upper-body workouts, and then you can drop one of the other pull-up exercises. (However, don’t forget the bent-over rows.)
At this point, if you’re looking for something more intense that will force you to do pull-ups almost every day, consider the 3RM version of the Fighter Pull-up Program . Once you can consistently do sets of five pull-ups, I’d recommend the Armstrong Pull-up Program , which is a bit more challenging. Pretty soon, you’ll be doing multiple pull-ups, not just one.