How to Get Your First Pull Up

If you can't do a pull up yet, there's an order to getting one. Grabbing the bar every week and pulling as hard as you can usually gets you a few inches and not much more, because you never get high enough to practice the rest of the pull. Every session ends in the same spot and it starts to feel like you're not getting anywhere. In order, it's hanging from the bar, then rows, then lowering yourself down slowly, then a band, and then the real one. The timing is different for everyone, so go by when each step feels easy rather than by the calendar.

The first couple of weeks

Before you can pull yourself up, you have to be able to hang there. Grab the bar with your palms facing away, let your feet come off the floor and hold. That's a dead hang. Do 3 hangs of 20 to 30 seconds, 2 or 3 times a week, and keep your shoulders from shrugging up by your ears. Move on when 30 seconds stops being a fight.

When hanging gets easy

Your back has to learn to pull before it can pull your whole body straight up, and rows are where it does that. Inverted rows on a smith machine are the easiest place to start. Set the bar around waist height, lie underneath it, grab it and pull your chest up to the bar with your body in a straight line. Pull with your back rather than your arms, so think about driving your elbows down toward your hips. Raise the bar to make it easier, lower it or walk your feet out to make it harder. Do 3 sets of 8 to 10, and move on when you can do that with the bar low.

Once rows feel easy

You're actually stronger lowering your body than lifting it, so even if you can't pull yourself up yet, you can usually control yourself on the way down. Stand on a box or a bench so your chin starts above the bar, take your feet off and lower yourself as slowly as you can until your arms are straight. It's a chin up hold and negative, done with your palms facing you, which a lot of people find a little easier than palms facing away. Hold at the top for a second or 2 first, with your arms actually working instead of just hanging off the bar, then lower. Aim for 3 to 5 seconds on the way down, do 3 to 5 of them with a step back up on the box each time, and do it 2 or 3 times a week. Your first few will probably drop faster than you want in the bottom half, and that's normal. The bottom is where you're weakest, so it's the last part to slow down. Time each one, because a lower that went from 2 seconds to 5 is progress you'd never see otherwise and it's easy to think nothing's happening. Move on when you can lower slowly the whole way on every one.

The weeks with the band

Loop a band over the bar and put one knee in it for a band assisted chin up, or use the assisted pull up machine if your gym has one. Now you're doing the whole rep with some help. Don't bounce out of the bottom off the band, and use a thinner band as it gets easier.

The first one

Eventually you take the band away and you get one. When you're starting out, I'd say doing multiple sets of 1 pull up with full explosion is more effective than 1 set of 3 or 4. Pull as hard and fast as you can, get your chin over the bar, come down under control, rest, and do another one. A set of 3 or 4 at this stage usually turns into 1 good rep and 2 or 3 ugly ones where you're kicking and swinging to get there, and the ugly ones don't build much. 4 or 5 sets of 1 gives you 4 or 5 good ones. Add a set when they all feel fast, and only then start putting 2 together. I'll keep writing these out step by step, and they go out free on Substack every week if you want the next one.

So where are you starting from, the hang or the band?