Transcription
So in this video, I'm talking about pull-ups. The exercise that people love to hate. They love to hate it because most people can't do 10 decent pull-ups, all the way up, all the way down, unassisted. And these days, unless you have a serious athletic background, very few men or women who are untrained can even do one pull-up. And people tend to feel, somehow or the other, like they aren't strong enough because they can't do it, and they should be able to do it. But the reality is, it's a very difficult exercise to do for men and for women.
Now, the question is, why is there such a discrepancy? Why can some people do pull-ups so easily? And I'll use myself as an example because I've always been able to do pull-ups relatively easily. But there is a reason why people like me can do pull-ups so easily compared to others. In this video, I'm going to talk about exactly what that secret is. So stay tuned. We'll talk more about this.
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Thank you. So, this video is talking about pull-ups. Why is it that some people can do pull-ups so easily, whereas others really struggle? But before I go any further, I'd like to thank everyone tuning in, especially those who seem to be a one-stop place for anyone interested in training naturally and without supplements. Thanks so much for all the support. And do be sure to like, subscribe, and hit that bell so you're first to learn to get the new content as it comes out.
So, on to our question at hand. Why are pull-ups so difficult, and why can some people do pull-ups so easily, whereas others really struggle? Well, first off, it's a simple matter of basic physics. If you're going to be doing a pull-up, it's not like any other exercise. Let's compare it with another exercise, like, let's say, a bicep curl. If I'm going to do a bicep curl and I'm just starting off, I'm going to start with a relatively light weight that I can handle in order to actually be able to do the exercise. I'm not going to put more weight than I can lift to do it for the first time. The problem with pull-ups is that because it's a bodyweight exercise, you literally are starting with your maximum weight.
So, if you're not naturally strong enough to pull yourself up and bring yourself back down and place up, up again, you aren't going to be able to do even one repetition. Which leads to point one. And point one is, people who weigh less tend to be better at doing pull-ups. Once again, it's basic physics. The more you weigh, the harder it is to do a pull-up. Now, rates of obesity have skyrocketed over the past 20 years, and even globally, average body weight has significantly increased, making it far less likely the average amount of women can do a single pull-up. So, next time someone who doesn't weigh that much says that pull-ups are easy, understand that it might not apply to you. And so, if you were focused on trying to do as many pull-ups as possible, it would make sense to reduce your body fat percentage as much as assumingly possible.
But what about people like myself, who weigh well over 200 pounds but can easily do pull-ups? And that's what we're going to talk about today. Because I think by going over how it was that I was able to do pull-ups and do them relatively easily, it will shed some light. So, why some people can easily do pull-ups and others can't, even though their body weight isn't on the lower side.
So, on my own journey with pull-ups, I was first introduced to pull-ups. So I started doing Ninjutsu. And within Ninjutsu, there's a very strong component of climbing. And one of the key movements in our training to build a climb are pull-ups. And keep in mind, when I started Ninjutsu, I weighed somewhere around 120 to 125 pounds. It was literally right before I started lifting weights. And the combination of how shall I say, light body weight, plus the fact that I've been doing martial arts since I was nine years old and was in relatively good physical shape at the time, made doing pull-ups almost effortless. Awesome. The considerable amount of free climbing, which I absolutely love, and I was really good at it because I didn't weigh that much. And so pulling myself up, even with one arm, wasn't that difficult.
Now, after having survived a pretty nasty accident, I stopped the free climbing. But outside bodybuilding, I'm an early bodybuilding coach. They were really heavy on the idea of doing pull-ups, which for me weren't that hard because, again, I only weighed at that time 125 pounds. And here is where it gets interesting. If we think about the story of progressive overload that's usually told about that athlete, Milos of Croton, who, as legend would have it, would lift a young heifer onto his shoulders every day. Then years went by, and the heifer got bigger and bigger. He got progressively stronger and stronger as he was able to adapt to the small emphasis and weight of the heifer.
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He gave a pretty impressive physique, and he was extremely strong. The same thing happened with me. When I started over 125 pounds, I was able to do pull-ups. And as I slowly got bigger and bigger, I was still able to keep on doing pull-ups because my muscles had enough time to adapt by increasing weight. And so, even at my heaviest, at 252 pounds, I could still do at least 10 pull-ups because it took me eight years to get to that weight, which was more than enough time when it was to adapt to the progressive overload.
Now, does that mean you won't be able to do a pull-up if you didn't start doing them younger or you don't weigh that much? Absolutely not. I have seen many men and women being able to do unassisted pull-ups who started off not even being able to do one pull-up. So, it is possible if you work at it. But there's one very important point in terms of how our muscles work. If you want to get the benefit of a pull-up, but you can't do a pull-up now, our muscles contract concentrically when we pull ourselves up, but they also contract eccentrically when we lengthen our muscles and come back down from a pull-up movement. That's the point in time in any exercise where we have the most muscle damage, as the muscle lengthens.
Now, it's that muscle damage that signals to our brain that we need to have our muscles repaired, bigger and stronger than they were initially, in order to deal with the overload we've just experienced. And if you can't do a regular pull-up, but do a jump pull-up where you jump up to the bar and lower yourself under control, you will have a significant amount of stimulation abilities in those dorsal muscles. That's actually not too far off from someone doing regular pull-ups. In fact, if you do it to the point of momentary negative or eccentric failure, you would actually get a stronger contraction and work your back muscles even more. So, it's when doing regular pull-ups, who's not pushing it. In fact, jump pull-ups are so effective that I would strongly recommend anyone who can't do pull-ups to add them to your routine because you will see a significant difference in your overall back development. And I strongly encourage these exercises with my own back development as well.
So, I hope this video gave some food for thought. Thanks so much for tuning in. And as always, Excelsior.