Pull Ups - Introduction

There are actually many ways of doing pull ups, and different kind of pull ups train different group of muscles.

Basically, there are 2 different grips when doing a pull up -

One is the over hand grip, where your palm is facing away from you. The other is the under hand grip, where your palm faces you. Doing an over hand grip pull up trains more on your forearm whereas doing the under hand grip pull ups focuses on your biceps. You can feel the difference when you do it.

From my point of view, I prefer doing over hand grip pull ups because they train the strength of my grip more efficiently than the under hand grip because over hand grip requires more strength. You will come to realise that doing an over hand grip pull up is actually harder than doing an under hand grip pull up. That is because of the way you grip the bar, the over hand grip requires more strength.

There are different types of pull ups that train different groups of muscle, so I am going to list the types of pull ups that I know and the muscle group that it will affect.

1) Normal Over Hand Grip Pull Ups - What I mean by normal is that the width of your 2 arms are just shoulder width apart. This will train up your strength of your forearm and will train up your lats (the wings of your back).

2) Wide Over Hand Grip Pull Ups - Place both of your arms wide apart. This kind of pull up will also train up your forearm muscle and strength, but it will not be training up your 'wing' muscles, which is the lats. Instead, the back muscle that it will train up is the inner back mucle, which is the group of muscle that is directly below your neck.

3) Under Hand Grip Pull Ups - This kind of pull ups focuses more on your biceps and it works the lats more than over hand grip pull ups.

4) Close Grip Over Hand Grip Pull Ups - This pull up is done with both of your fists close to each other. Both thumbs are supposed to meet. This pull up trains a lot on your grip strength and your fore arm muscles.

The above are the normal pull ups. When you are bored doing these regular pull ups, you can do the following -

1) Clapping Pull Ups - This pull up is called clapping pull ups because it done when you pull yourself up real hard and clap both of your hand before gripping the bar back again. It is not easy. The first time that I attempted it, I fell to the ground.

2) Dick-up Pull Ups - Sorry for the dirty word. Lol. They call it the dick up pull up because this pull up is done this way: Pull up very hard and turn your arms, facing both the elbows up to the sky and push yourself up. And there, with your body level crossing the bar by so much, there comes the name of it.

3) One Hand Pull Ups - To me, this is the hardest kind of pull up. As the name suggests, hang your body with only one arm holding the bar, and pull yourself all the way up!

Well, I have introduced the kind of pull ups that I know, and in the next entry, I will guide you on how to do more pull ups. Even if you cannot do a single pull up, dont worry! I am here to help you do more pull ups!