Poll: Pull ups. Have you ever done one?
- Thread starter Olas
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They're wicked hard to do when you get started. Fortunately I went to a gym that had an assisted pull-up machine that let you reduce the difficulty. Now I can not only do raised-leg pull-ups, but inverted ones too. You hang from the bar, point your feet straight up, and then pull up. It's crazy hard but fun.
I used to do pull ups, then I stopped training for years... I KNOW I can't do one right now, as I have a busted arm, but a week ago I may have been able to do a couple...
Yeah, I do a few before and after when I exercise. It's not really hard, you just gotta get used to it a bit, buy that thing you stick over your door and try a few times a day, you'll manage to do them in no time, I got to some 12-13 back when I was focusing on that, nowadays I can do about 8 or so.
I used to be able to do a good number of all the basic excersizes, you know like sit up, push up, pull up etc (by good number I mean 20 - 30), so nothing amazing.
These days I could manage to do maybe 5 or 6 before crying.
EDIT: I never noticed a difference between grips, by which I mean which side of the bar my hands where on. I even did a few with crossed arms on monkey bars, put your left hand on the right hand grip and right hand on the left hand grip ... without spinning round.
These days I could manage to do maybe 5 or 6 before crying.
EDIT: I never noticed a difference between grips, by which I mean which side of the bar my hands where on. I even did a few with crossed arms on monkey bars, put your left hand on the right hand grip and right hand on the left hand grip ... without spinning round.
I dance, so although my upper body strength has never been on par with my lower body strength, it's always been significantly higher than most guys of my weight. (Lifting girls over your head, even tiny ones, takes a lot more power and control than you'd think.) So yeah, I can do pull-ups. Not a ton of them, but I can do them.
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That's at least a little weird. For most people it's much easier with their palms facing toward them (chin-ups) and significantly harder with their palms facing away from them (pull-ups) because of which muscles you end up using.omega 616 said:
I can still do a few, but not many or easily compared to before. Same with most other basic exercises like that. I was in great shape, but while I was sick I lost something like 30 pounds of muscle compared to back then, along with any kind of regular exercise habit I had. My wrist/hand needs to get better so I can sign up for aikido already.
Welcome to my wheelhouse: I work out regularly and know a lot of things about it.
Push-ups use your chest and triceps. Pull-ups use your back and biceps. If you do proper pull-ups, that is with your arms wider than shoulder width apart and your hands facing away from you, then you use more of your back than your arms, and because of your shoulder position you have less leverage, which makes them harder. If you do chin-ups, that is with your hands narrower than shoulder-width apart and facing you, you use more biceps than back, and have more leverage, making them easier.
If you go to a gym, there should be an assisted pull-up machine that lets you put your knees on a moving pad while doing the exercise. That will effectively reduce your weight, so you can do the pull-up motion with less weight than your bodyweight. You should also do lat pulldowns, which are basically the same motion except you're sitting down with your knees below a pad, pulling a bar down to you rather than yourself up to a bar.
Other exercises you can do to strengthen your back and make it easier to do a pull-up are single-arm rows, and pullovers. Single-arm rows involve a dumbbell and a bench: you put one knee on the bench, and the same arm as well, with your other leg out at an angle for balance, and you use your free arm to lift a dumbbell straight up and down to your chest; do it equally for both sides.
Pullovers involve lying on your back on a bench, holding a single dumbbell in both hands, but vertically; your palms should be flat on the inside of the weight load on one end of the dumbbell. Keeping your arms straight, rotate them back behind your head until the weight almost touches the ground, then, still keeping them straight, rotate them back up so your arms are vertical. Always be mindful of how much weight you're using, and if you ever feel sharp pain anywhere, stop immediately.
There are other back exercises, but they work different parts of the back than you use to do pull-ups. If you're taking working out seriously, you need to make sure that you don't overdevelop one set of muscles and ignore another, so you'll want to also work on your chest, shoulders, legs, arms, and core; the body is a unit, and you need to treat it as such.
Push-ups use your chest and triceps. Pull-ups use your back and biceps. If you do proper pull-ups, that is with your arms wider than shoulder width apart and your hands facing away from you, then you use more of your back than your arms, and because of your shoulder position you have less leverage, which makes them harder. If you do chin-ups, that is with your hands narrower than shoulder-width apart and facing you, you use more biceps than back, and have more leverage, making them easier.
If you go to a gym, there should be an assisted pull-up machine that lets you put your knees on a moving pad while doing the exercise. That will effectively reduce your weight, so you can do the pull-up motion with less weight than your bodyweight. You should also do lat pulldowns, which are basically the same motion except you're sitting down with your knees below a pad, pulling a bar down to you rather than yourself up to a bar.
Other exercises you can do to strengthen your back and make it easier to do a pull-up are single-arm rows, and pullovers. Single-arm rows involve a dumbbell and a bench: you put one knee on the bench, and the same arm as well, with your other leg out at an angle for balance, and you use your free arm to lift a dumbbell straight up and down to your chest; do it equally for both sides.
Pullovers involve lying on your back on a bench, holding a single dumbbell in both hands, but vertically; your palms should be flat on the inside of the weight load on one end of the dumbbell. Keeping your arms straight, rotate them back behind your head until the weight almost touches the ground, then, still keeping them straight, rotate them back up so your arms are vertical. Always be mindful of how much weight you're using, and if you ever feel sharp pain anywhere, stop immediately.
There are other back exercises, but they work different parts of the back than you use to do pull-ups. If you're taking working out seriously, you need to make sure that you don't overdevelop one set of muscles and ignore another, so you'll want to also work on your chest, shoulders, legs, arms, and core; the body is a unit, and you need to treat it as such.