4 Steps To Progress Your Pull-Ups

Pull-ups are one of my favourite exercises.

They're great for developing pull strength, building the lats and upper back, and need minimal equipment to do so.

They're also a great measure of your relative strength. If you strength and body-composition are both in a good place you'll likely be smashing out a good few reps for multiple sets. If one or both has room for improvement, it'll show in your pull-up ability.

The downside is that they are genuinely really hard.

In terms of loading you're potentially asking yourself to go from nothing to your full bodyweight, something you would never do on a free-weight or machine exercise.

Imagine me having a new client and just immediately loading the bodyweight on the bench press and seeing what they can do. That's a crushed windpipe waiting to happen.

So in this article let me take you through my 4 step method to progress your pull-ups, particularly if you've got yourself to the point of being able to complete 3-5 good reps, but you want to be hitting multiple sets for double figures.

Warm-Up

Before I get into the 4 steps to progress your pull-ups, it's important to understand that you should probably be warming up for your pull-ups much like you would for a big barbell compound.

As I said before, pull-ups are hard and you're pulling your entire bodyweight up. You wouldn't start your bench or squat sets with your bodyweight on the bar. You'd start with an empty bar, 50% of your working weight 75%, 90% and only then get into your work sets.

I advise you treat your pull-ups in a similar way.

A couple of sets of assisted pull-ups, barbell pull-ups, lat-pull downs, TRX rows will go a long way to preparing yourself for some really solid sets of pull-ups.

Step 1: The AMRAP/Percentage Method

This is a method I use all the time with clients, and is something I learned from Andy McKenzie.

I love this method as it automatically scales to each clients ability levels, and is equally as effective if you can do 4 reps, or 20 reps of pull-ups.

It's a simple 4 week progression where you do one AMRAP (As Many Reps As Possible) set, followed by 2-3 sets of a percentage of that amount as follows:

Week 1: AMRAP/25%/25%/25%

Week 2: AMRAP/50%/25%/25%

Week 3: AMRAP/50%/50%/25%

Week 4: AMRAP/50%/50%/50%

So for example in week one, if your AMRAP set was 4 reps, your following 3 sets would be 1/1/1.

It's a gradual increase in volume and density, and is really effective for progressing the amount of reps that you do without losing focus on your technique as sets 2, 3 and 4 are all sub-maximal.

It also allows room for your maximal capacity to progress over the 4 weeks, which is pretty common to see.

Step 2: The Average Method

After 4 weeks of the AMRAP/Percentage Method, I progress clients to The Average Method.

For this I take the average reps per set across the final week of the AMRAP/Percentage method (AMRAP/50%/50%/50%), and use that as our base for phase 2.

For example, lets say in the final week of the AMRAP/Percentage method, my client got 8/4/4/4. That's 20 total reps. Divide that across the 4 sets the got them over and you have an average of 5 reps per set.

This is our baseline for the next few weeks progression, and we will aim to add reps to this over the following weeks.

This could look one of 2 ways.

Option A)

Week 1: 5/5/5/5

Week 2: 6/5/5/5

Week 3: 6/6/5/5

Week 4: 6/6/6/5

Week 5: 6/6/6/6

Option B)

Week 1: 5/5/5/5

Week 2: 6/6/6/6

Week 3: 7/7/7/7

Week 4: 8/8/8/8

Option B is obviously much more aggressive and most people will not be able to progress at that rate whilst maintaining technique, but as long as we are increasing our total volume of reps week to week with good technique, I am happy.

That is the aim of the game in the Average Method:

Step 3: The Partitioned Method

The Partitioned Method is the next progression on from the Average Method. For this we are going to take the total number of reps completed in the final week of the Average Method, and partition them out over some short time intervals.

If we take our cline who finished the Average Method with 4 sets of 6 reps. That is 24 reps total.

Im going to take those 24 reps and break them up into small sets of 2 or 3 (usually two), and do a set every 15-20 seconds (usually 20).

I will then progress this at least once over the next 4 week block, by either increasing the amount of sets, the reps in the set, or reducing the rest between sets.

This could look like:

Week 1: 2 reps every 20s for 4 minutes (24 total reps)

Week 2: 2 Reps every 20s for 5 minutes (30 total reps)

Week 3: 2 Reps every 20s for 5 minutes (30 total reps)

Week 4: 2 Reps every 15s for 4 minutes (32 total reps)

It is important to err on the side of caution with this prescription as every though every set is very sub-maximal, the limited rest will catch up with the client from around halfway onwards.

We don't want to be sacrificing technique for reps, so start cautious and build.

Step 4: The For Time Method

Things are starting to sound a bit CrossFitty now, but don't worry, there is still no kipping being done here and this is going to ramp up your strict rep capacity.

The final step is to set yourself a target total of reps, starting at where you ended the Partitioned Method, and complete those reps as quickly as possible.

Then in the following weeks, aim to beat your time, making the work denser, and potentially increase the rep target if it is going well.

This would look like:

Week 1: 32 reps for time (target sub 4 minutes)

Week 2: 32 reps for time (beat last weeks time)

Week 3: 35 reps for time (beat week 1's time)

Week 4: 35 reps for time (beat last weeks time)

The most successful approach is to stay far away from failure, and continue along the lines of the Partitioned Method. Lots of very small sets with short rest will be much quicker than blasting out an AMRAP and then never getting that out of your system.

Following these 4 steps will help you accumulate a LOT of sub maximal but technically very good reps, which are going to help your overall pull-up development massively.

After this 12 week progression re-test you pull-up max rep set, and I guarantee you will A) get a load more reps and B) your reps will be of a much higher quality.

To have this put into practice for you with my expert guidance alongside, check out my 1-1 online coaching service.