Why You Struggle with pull ups - by coach TJ
You have been doing CrossFit for a while. You come in day after day for the workouts. You are feeling better, looking better and performing better. Yet day after day you are stuck on a scaled version of a pull up. While scaled versions of a pull up (banded or jumping for example) are great exercises to keep allow the hear rate to stay up and get the conditioning portion of the workout, they will not necessarily translate into you magically not needing the box or band one day.
Below are the two most common reasons why people are forever stuck to the “scaled pull up”.
1. You Haven’t Focused On Developing Strength
The jumping pull-ups and banded kipping pull-ups are the most common way we scale the pull up for athletes. These substitutions might be adequate in our metcons to keep that heart rate elevated, but they aren’t particularly effective in developing the strength necessary to perform a proper pull-up. These scaled versions are great “substitutions” for a regular pull up, but they are not designed to solely take their place. You are going to need to focus on developing upper body pulling strength outside of your daily WOD. Some simple exercises to do to help develop this strength are pull up negatives (jump to the “chin over bar” position off a box and as slowly as you can lower yourself back down) and isometric hold at the top (jump to the “chin over bar” position and hold yourself there as long as you can). Doing the typical five sets of five reps for these movements is a great place to start. Talk to a coach if you are unsure how to properly do these movements. Your coach will also be able to better tell you where to start if there is something that might suit you better.
2. Your Strength To Bodyweight Ratio Needs Improvement
Maybe you are strong. You feel good in the barbell movements and you can move some weight around easily enough. Maybe the body weight movements are quite as easy for you. Think handstand push ups, pull ups, ring dips, etc. If these movements are still a big struggle for you (or a no-go all together) despite having built up some real good strength, most likely we need to look at the load being moved through space. Our body. If this isn’t something you have thought about before, the body weight movements are going to be tough for you. While you don’t want to lose any of the strength you have built up, you do want to lighten the load. This most likely can be accomplished with simple nutrition changes. Very simply, you need to be burning more calories than you are putting in. Once you have that in check, make sure the calories are coming from quality, whole foods. While nutrition is an extremely vast rabbit hole to jump into; those two points will make a big difference for you if you are just starting that journey.
Make it a goal to achieve your first strict pull-up within a set time frame. Depending on what you need to overcome, three to six months should be plenty of time for you to perform your first rep. Talk to your coach about lining up a goal-setting session. These can be done with any coach at 306, and are a great starting point to reaching any particular goal you have in mind. For the pull ups specifically, figure out which of the above reason is preventing you from getting, work on the weakness and set up goal setting meeting with a coach to get you there without any wasted efforts.
See ya on top of the bar!