Pull Ups: One Exercise to Rule Them All
By: Alex Horscroft
Tags: Muscle Growth, Muscle Building, Workout, Strength, Pull Ups

Photo by Edgar Chaparro on Unsplash

You are hanging off a cliff face with nothing but your hands to hold you up. Damn, I am heavy you thought, before plunging down hundreds of meters to the jagged rocks below. Should have practised your pull ups.

I have always been perplexed by the notion of a pull up, even after I got pretty good at them. The idea of being able to lift your entire body up with just two measly arms is an amazing feat if you really think about it.

No other exercise portrays overall body strength in relation to body weight so well. Take the bench press, the phrase “how much do you bench bro?” which is so prevalent in today’s gym culture, propagates this idea that maximum bench press is a good indicator of athletic prowess. Yet this meathead mentality is dated, and unless we are discussing the likes of powerlifting, I would argue that pull ups are a far greater indicator of one’s abilities.

This idea, that one's bench press one-rep max is all that matters is fundamentally flawed. It does not take into account body weight which is just as important as the weight being lifted.

Let’s compare a 130kg male, bench pressing 120kg, to another male weighing 60kg, bench pressing 100kg. It is clear that the lighter individual is the superior athlete, he is lifting 166.67% of his body weight whereas the heavier individual is only lifting 108.33%. Given that the bench press PR’s that are being thrown around in today’s locker-room talk rarely include body weight, it seems pointless to engage in such menial discussion.

That’s where pull ups come in. There is no cheating with pull ups, you are the weight you are, and there is no escaping it. Dead hang from chin to bar. That means no swinging, no kipping, and FULL range of motion. It is such a challenging exercise to perform that even completing a single repetition is exemplary in my eyes: it’s just that difficult.

Yet there seems to be some misconception that pull ups are some unachievable feat reserved for the elite, but this could not be further from the truth. Anyone can do a pull up if they put in the work, and I bet that you would be able to achieve one much quicker than you thought you would if you would just give it a try.

One of the reasons I am such a fan of pull ups is the variety of muscles that it works. Pull ups are separated into 3 main categories: the standard pull up (pronated grip), the chin up (supinated grip), and the neutral pull up (neutral grip). By incorporating these 3 grips into your pull up workout you can essentially work every muscle group in the upper body. There are very few exercises that can claim this ability.

Another pro for the pull up is it’s versatility. On holiday with no access to a gym? No problem, find a sturdy branch or a set of monkey bars and you will have no issue getting a sweat on. Hey, you might even be lucky enough to have a park near your house, that saves you £30 for a gym membership every month.

Speaking from experience, I have also found that pull ups are a much safer exercise relative to many other popular movements. The likes of the bench press, shoulder press, and even dips are far more likely to result in injury. Much of this is due to having a heavier load which places greater stress on the muscles and joints, but also because these exercises are pushing movements that involve locking out at the elbow. Looking back, I cannot recall any injuries I sustained from pull ups, besides soreness, whereas the list of injuries I sustained from the likes of bench press and shoulder press are plentiful.

What’s crazy to me is that even after around 10 years of doing pull ups, I still have a lot of room to progress. That’s the thing with pull ups, for 99.9% of us there is NO finish line. Able to perform 20 pull ups consecutively? Let’s put 10kg on a weight belt and see how many you can do. Two arms too easy? Try 1, that should slow you down. There are even the likes of the muscle up, which truly is the ultimate display of athletic ability that can only be performed by the elite few. But if you want to do it, you can. As with anything, it just takes practise.

Whether it is just that 1 pull up you want to do, or a set of 30 to impress your friends, there is no time like the present. Incorporate pull ups as part of your training regiment, you will not regret it.