Increase Training Frequency

Training frequency is the easiest way to break through a plateau. The good news is that pull ups can be done easily 3-4 times a week without risking injury, this is not the case with heavy deadlifts! If you are currently performing only one session per week on pull ups then increasing this to two will have a huge impact on your pull up progression.

Weekly volume is a huge predictor of training success in terms of muscle growth and strength, so adding more frequency is a very simple way to increase your weekly volume. Be careful to add frequency slowly, large increases in weekly training volume can lead to repetitive strain injuries like tendonitis.

Increase Training Volume

Another simple way to increase your weekly volume, is to increase the amount of sets you perform within a single session. If you have been doing 3 sets of pull ups and you move this to 6 sets it will have a huge impact on your progression. With both an increase in frequency and an increase in session volume you can move from performing 3 sets per week to performing 12 vertical pulling sets per week. The end goal should be to perform 12-18 sets per week in the vertical pull movement pattern and you will see enormous progress in your pull ups.

Remember to build this up slowly over time. Large jumps in volume can often result in injuries as the body is not used to performing so much work in such a limited amount of time. Use progressive overload successfully and slowly ramp up the volume over a period of months and you will be sure to see progression in you pull ups and break through your plateau.

Strength Training

For many individuals pull ups and the vertical pulling movement pattern are all about how many pull ups you can perform not how strong you are in the vertical pull. Once you can perform more than 5-8 pull ups we are no longer talking about a question of strength, but strength endurance and muscular endurance. Often people get stuck on just training the amount of pull ups they can perform and never focusing on their strength in the vertical movement pattern. Whats your max pull up? This is not a question people ask each other, it should be as it is one of the key movement patterns in resistance training and people should be trying to get strong in this movement pattern not just build muscular endurance.

Using strength training in the pull up is one of the most effective ways to break through a pull up plateau. This can be done through using weighted pull ups or other strength training variations like strict chest to bar pulls, archer pull ups etc. Strength training, which involves increasing the amount of force produced in a muscle, is all about lifting heavy items for minimal repetitions. So you want to find exercises that challenge you enough that you can only perform 3-5 repetitions on it, this might be a weighted pull up with 5kg or with 20kg depending on how good you are with pull ups already.

Muscular Endurance Training

If you cannot perform more than 5 pull ups then just doing regular pull ups will be your strength training and you can put more emphasis on building muscular endurance. Individuals who have reached a plateau on their pull ups and can perform 5+ pull ups should also be using muscular endurance work to improve their pull ups. Muscular endurance is all about how many repetitions you can perform on a certain exercise. Increasing your muscular endurance in a movement pattern will require you to accumulate lots of fatigue through performing lots of repetitions in that movement pattern. So in terms of improving pull up muscular endurance you will need to perform a high number of pull ups.

This is where performing banded pull ups or using lat pull downs can be extremely beneficial. It is hard to perform true muscular endurance training with pull ups as they require a great deal of strength. Using exercises like lat pulls downs and banded pull ups allows us to reach the point where we can perform 15-25+ repetitions on multiple sets and truly work on muscular endurance.

Static Holds

Static holds are less effective than the aforementioned techniques to break through pull up plateaus but are non the less a great training tool. Often times within a movement pattern we will have points where we feel very weak and as if a specific part of the movement is much more difficult than the other parts. This is where static holds can be beneficial, using a static hold to isolate your weakest point in the pull up will be an amazing way to break through these kinds of plateaus. Below are some great example of static holds you can use in your training programme.

Tempo Pull Ups

Using a tempo is all about performing an exercise at a specific pace, this is done to slow things down and make an exercise more challenging. This is not a magic bullet for breaking through plateaus but can be another fun and challenging way to increase the strength of the vertical pull movement pattern. This includes using eccentric pull ups if you are not able to perform pull ups, however, this is not the target audience of this article however.

Be Honest About Your Bodyweight

Performing pull ups requires you to lift your bodyweight. If you are 100kg instead of 80kg you have a 20kg more to lift, this has a huge impact on the amount of pull ups you can perform. I am not saying you should try and lose weight, just that it needs to be taken into consideration. If you are gaining weight and your pull ups are plateauing this is completely normal. Be honest with yourself about your current weight and how it might be affecting you ability to perform bodyweight exercises.