Friday, December 26, 2008

Massive Strength Development with Pull Ups

By Marcus Martinez

It's no secret that the pull up is one of the most powerful tools in your strength, back and grip development arsenal. If this is the case, then why can most people only do one, and most likely with a lot of strain? Why do most people avoid pull ups like the plague even though they know the benefits? Most trainees don't do pull ups because they are hard! If you are looking to gain strength, the question is not IF you should include pull ups in your training, but HOW MANY.

Like many body weight training exercises, pull ups are an efficient exercise that incorporates a multitude of muscles during each rep. Few other workouts can hit your upper body and grip strength the way that pull ups can. Try busting a few and you'll find that your arms, shoulders, back, and abs all get hit at once.

It doesn't matter if you can't even do one pull up; once you start trying you'll be reaping the benefits of the exercise. You just need to build up to the point of incorporating entire sets into your workout plan. The best way to work up to this is by using a technique call Greasing the Groove.

Pavel Tsatsouline, the Russian kettlebell instructor, teaches the Grease the Groove technique to rapidly increase your performance in any exercise. The concept is simple, throughout a long time period, say eight hours, you do as many pull ups as possible by doing numerous sets. So every time you pass the pull up bar throughout a day you do as many reps as you can without going to failure. By the end of the day, you'll have done at least 10 or more pull ups. That's Greasing the Groove.

You might say, that looks good in theory, but what if I don't have access to a pull up bar. The answer is to grease the groove during your workout. Let's assume that you are at the gym for about an hour. During that hour in between sets of other exercises, go to the pull up bar and just do a few pull ups, not to failure. Perform pull ups every 5 minutes or so. As the hour passes, you'll have done about 10-15 pull ups. So, start working on your pull ups and you'll be reaping the benefits of having a powerful upper body, ridiculous grip strength, and the impressive ability to lift yourself over and over in no time.

One piece of equipment that gave me the ability to do pull ups at home or anywhere I wanted was the Tactical Athlete Pull up System (TAPS). It assembles to become a free-standing pull up system. I use it at home or take it with me. It assembles in about 15 minutes and is perfect for group training or outdoor training.

The height, portability, and stability of the Tactical Athlete Pull Up System are what make it special. The adjustable height allows you to do exercises with a full hang, no matter how tall you are. The portability also allows you to put it up wherever you want to workout, whether that be in your garage, backyard, or at a park. For doing pull ups, nothing beats it. - 16752

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