Benefits of Different Pull Up Variations

Break Through Plateaus

Pull ups are a challenging exercise to progress. Unlike with weight training where we can increase our lifts by 1.25kg and be happy with ourselves, improving 1-2 repetitions on pull ups can take six months and often feels like you have made little progress even when this is substantial progress. The exercises in this list will be an excellent way to help you move your pull ups forward through providing the body with a new stimulus.

Improve Strength Metrics

A few of these variations are extremely effective at creating improvements in strength metrics (the amount of force production). Strength is improved through lifting loads which are heavy and can only be performed through performing 1-6 repetitions. This therefore means that once you are able to perform 10+ strict pull ups, you are not improving the strength of your vertical pull, but improving strength endurance while adding muscle mass. Pull up variations that challenge you in ways that mean you cannot perform more than 5 to 7 reps will help you improve your strength.

Novelty

Using different exercises on a regular basis is very important when it comes to motivation. This may sound like an insignificant benefit, but it is actually the key to having a consistent movement practice and seeing results over time. Individuals who find their training boring and do not enjoy doing their sessions will also bring far less intensity to their training. This mixture of intensity and consistency is what moves things forward over time.

How To Implement Different Pull Up Variations

Performing between 8-12 sets per week of vertical pulling exercises will ensure that your pull ups are progressing well over time. If you are inconsistent with this amount of volume you may find training pull ups to be very challenging as making progress on 4 sets per week can be challenging.

That is why if you do chose to perform some of these different pull up variations, consider having a second pull up variation in you week to ensure you are hitting the correct amount of volume to progress. Personally I like to have at least one strength based and one muscular endurance based pull up exercises in my week. With this as a minimum, plus any horizontal pulling in my training programme, I can be sure that I am moving in the right direction.

5 Different Pull Up Variations to Break Through Plateaus