The Ultimate Pulling Athlete - Supreme Pulling Power, Strength & Endurance

Modern strength text books will tell you that you can either have STRENGTH, POWER or ENDURANCE and that building one will take away from the other.

While this might be true for the absolute top 0.1%… it’s not true for everyone else.

Why?

Because strength makes you relatively lighter than your output. Light things are easy to move both fast and for reps.

Calisthenics athletes collect hundreds of reps & BECAUSE of that, not in-spite of it, they can perform 1-arm chins, explosive muscle-ups and beyond.

#1 Pronated shoulder width / Rings

#2 Neutral Grip

#3 Supinated close grip

#4 Supinated shoulder width

#5 Pronated wide

#6 Alternate grip (less fingers)

#7 Arching Pull-ups

#8 Arching Chin-Ups

Other Variations

All components of the pull are valid. Where you are weakest in the range is where you’ll get the most gains. Pauses and pulses will help you spend more of your training budget for the day on the part of the pull that needs most investment.

Use them mostly on heavier days

2 second pauses, 5 second pauses and 10 seconds pauses.

Eccentrics - Go slow on the way down.

2 seconds, 5 seconds and 10 seconds. Pauses can be part of the 5-10 seconds to favour the weakness.

Go faster on these.

LADDERS - 1-2-3-4-5-6 see how hight you can get within a 5 or t0 minute period.

Variation take 15 seconds rest between sets and go back to 1 every-time you need to.

If you end up doing a single repetition every 15 seconds… great.

DENSE - What’s the most number of quality repetitions that you can sustain on the minute? Practice with half your maximum and sneak in an extra repetition.

Deficit Push-ups

Neck Press

Go slower generally on these.

DENSE - 1-3 Repetitions on the minute for 10 minutes. Weighted or towards single arm (1-2 reps each side).

Scap Pulls

Shoulder Balance - Powell Raises, Seated External Rotations / Cuban Raises, Trap 3 Raises, Band-Pull Aparts

Pullovers

Biceps (sup, neural, pronated, reverse) - Spider curls (Short), Standing (mid), Long (Incline or lying curls) - Preacher curls are a different long

Triceps (sup, neural, pronated, reverse)- Kick-backs and press down extensions, skull-crushers (mid), french press (long)

Rep Types - 5D10 / 50 reps / 100 reps

Elite climbers tend to train daily, often multiple times per day or for 2-3 hours at one time.

5-10 minutes of pull work daily is a good place to start building that momentum.