Having trouble with my pullups.

[JamesShaw]

Before I continue, I attempted to do a search, however I am having technical difficulties with it.

I ship out Sept 8th. I am fine on my running time and situps for the IST, however I am having problems with doing even one pull up. I have been doing assisted pullups and my recruiter has had me doing pushups and leg lifts as well. I have seen some definite improvement in my pullups. However being so close to shipping off I am gettin nervous as to whether I will be able to do the two pull ups in time. I'm in decent shape. I'm not overweight, I'm fit. Yet I see guys in worse shape than me, who can crank out five easy. I'm not sure if it's my form or what.

I'd like to ask for any and all advice for getting ready to do them and how to improve my form.

[srinaldo86]

One of the Recruiters I've spoken with suggested getting an axe and cutting wood everyday as much as you can. I suppose it just builds shoulder strength. An alternative would be hitting a large tire with a sledgehammer.
Theres also the more logical option of doing pull downs at the gym. Maxing out eveytime until you can reach your weight and do it proficently.

[srinaldo86]

P.s. I'll see you there about a month after you get there.

[RuffNight2007]

I hate all these pull up questions poolee's always ask. What's the best way of improving pull ups? By doing them! In your case... not being able to do even 1... which no offence, is sad as ****... do assisted pull ups. Theres no ****ing secret here... do as many assisted pull ups as you can every day for 5 days, take a 2 day break and see if you improved! Repeat till 3 days before shipping out! KILL!

[BR34]

I hate all these pull up questions poolee's always ask. What's the best way of improving pull ups? By doing them! In your case... not being able to do even 1... which no offence, is sad as ****... do assisted pull ups. Theres no ****ing secret here... do as many assisted pull ups as you can every day for 5 days, take a 2 day break and see if you improved! Repeat till 3 days before shipping out! KILL!

Yea, I'm gonna co-sign what the LCpl has just said.

There is no special super secret way to improve pullups. You need to just keep doing them. Chopping trees, doing pushups, leg lifts, climbing buildings, gutting fish...none of those ultra super secret ways of improving will get you there faster than just doing pullups! You need to just keep being assisted until you can do them on your own, then just KEEP DOING THEM!

[BR34]

Another thing, about something you said...


I'm not overweight, I'm fit. Yet I see guys in worse shape than me, who can crank out five easy.

Okay, I'm gonna have to disagree. You may think you're fit, but if you can't do 1 pullup, you aren't. And you may think they are in worse shape than you, but hell, obviously if they can do at least 5 and you can't do 1, they AREN'T in worse shape than you. Hell, they may be on another forum right now telling people about how you're in worse shape with them.

But, I'll give you some advice. Get with those that you think you're doing so much better than, have them help you with your pullups, and you help them in whatever their weak areas may be.

[PhantomLord]

I went from 6 to 21 in 2 months just by doing 3 sets of max each day, 5 days a week.

On wednesday's you can also do a pyramid which helps with your endurance.

start out like this


2-4-6-8-10-8-6-4-2

Its a great workout and you have just done 50 pull ups. I have a stop watch and i time my breaks by 30 seconds. Its keeps your heart rate up while still giving you a small break to recover.


Like the other Marines and poolee's have said its just a matter of sucking it up and doing it. Training to your max each day with all of your exercises will also greatly increase your VO2 Max. Thats how much oxygen your blood can hold to carry to your muscles, there for giving you more strength, more endurance, less burn, and more explosion. Its also the best way to tell a persons cardio rate.

[Haffner]

Gather round, children.

Here's a story about PFC Haffner. PFC Haffner pretty much sucked ass at diong pullups. PFC Haffner was only able to pump out 5 pullups. PFC Haffner tried every little secret squirrel kung fu champion ninja apprentice to master training technique to boost his pullups -- all to no avil.

Alas! Do not lose hope yet, children! On a cloudy Monday morning, a mighty NCO, a Sgt at that, came to PFC Haffner's side and aided him at a point in time where he needed it the most...the *dun dun dun* pullup bar.

The mighty Sgt looked at PFC Haffner and pointed a mighty knifehand at him and exclaimed, "PFC Haffner - you freakin' suck at this trash. Every time you freakin' have a dog gone cigarette, you will do 5 pullups." And it was so. And it was good.

PFC Haffner continued this until the very next Monday, at which point PFC Haffner did a max set and achieved 9 pullups! The Sgt, with his recently sharpened knife hands, once again cast his deathly visage upon the lowly little PFC Haffner and bellowed, "Good, freakin'...freakin' dog gone Haffner. Now you'll do 5 before your cigarette -- and freakin 5 freakin more after!" PFC Haffner responded, in the position of parade rest, "Aye, Sgt."

The rest of that week and the following were filled with a violent maelstrom of pullups, smoking, and more pull ups.

The following Monday, upon performing a max set, PFC Haffner realised that he was now capable of 14, yes, 14 pull ups. In the span of one month, he had made a gain of 9 pull ups.

Now that I've gotten the funny-ish story part out of the way, lemme break it down a tiny bit more and relate it to only being able to 1 or so (versus 5).

First off, I do not condone smoking in ANY WAY and it in no way helped me do pull ups. The Sgt just noticed that I'd have about 7-8 throughout the work day (pretty much whenever I was outside working, I WAS a PFC after all).

Without having said it the science behind this was pretty simple. He took something I did multiple times a day - that I do EVERY day -- not just some -- and attached pull ups to it. Smoking was something I was guaranteed to do at least 7-8 times a day - so pull ups were naturally attached to it. The first few days I was doing about 35 a day. 7 to 8 sets of 5. A week or so later, it was 70 a day. A week after the end of the little "story" I was doing 10 before a smoke and 10 after.

I ended up hitting 20 basically two months after that first day -- at which point I was allowed to stop with that if I made sure I did at least 50 a day total.

You have to do pull ups more than once a day. I took the weekends off from pull ups (when I didn't have to work, that is). I mean, ****, find SOMETHING you do more than once a day that you can easily and conveniantly attach to pull ups. Everytime you eat -- make a pact with yourself that before you put a bite in your mouth you'll do a damn pull up. Or every time you drink (not alcohol, could get hurt that way) do a damn pull up first.

Moral of the story (to be repetitive, like any good Cpl is): you HAVE to do pull ups many, MANY times a day to make gains fast. That's pretty straight forward. If you can only do one, you should be doing that one pull up every 15 minutes on the dot -- that's what I'd do. Now go GET SOME!

[BR34]

That's some good advice Cpl.

For me, when I was a poolee, lazy and all, I would go outside and do a max set on every commercial break for whatever show I was watching on t.v., lol...worked pretty well.

[Haffner]

Hell yeah, that's pretty much what I'm talkin' about. The only slight difference is smoking is something that I carried out throughout the day - from waking up to sleep. Kept me doing them all day, but that's the principal right there.

If y'all stick with this kind've program for a good while, at least a month and a half, you'll see results. You'll be doing more sets and more pull ups each day versus what you normally would plan on. Mount a bar in your room or garage or something and just do this program throughout the day.

Think of this. Say you go to the gym EVERY DAY for one hour. Currently you can only do 4. You might go to the gym and think, "In this hour, I'm going to do 5 sets of 3." In the span of that hour, you'll feel a good burn from everything else you're doing and from those pull ups, to boot. Good on you. However, mentally you'll be "done" working out for the day. Pull ups are largely mental. When you do your max set at the beginning of each week to record progress, you can NOT be counting them in your head. You have to do it until you feel 100% physical exhaustion.

This is only based on personal experience and overseeing others, but I believe one of the strongest factors that results in slow gains is that when people are doing a max set, for the purposes of recording gain,, they get to their last max, example 4, then struggle through a really tough 5th one, and are like, "God damn, I increased one!" Which is good and fine, improvement is improvement, but sometimes you gotta "set the bar a little higher" if you get what I'm saying. That person might've been able to rip out a 6th one, however, doing a 5th was so mentally outside of his regular comfort zone that, without realising this, he kind've quit on himself.

[LuDog]

im gona try that, ive been doing it every commercial break, gona do it every day.

thanks

[RuffNight2007]

Gather round, children.

Here's a story about PFC Haffner. PFC Haffner pretty much sucked ass at diong pullups. PFC Haffner was only able to pump out 5 pullups. PFC Haffner tried every little secret squirrel kung fu champion ninja apprentice to master training technique to boost his pullups -- all to no avil.

Alas! Do not lose hope yet, children! On a cloudy Monday morning, a mighty NCO, a Sgt at that, came to PFC Haffner's side and aided him at a point in time where he needed it the most...the *dun dun dun* pullup bar.

The mighty Sgt looked at PFC Haffner and pointed a mighty knifehand at him and exclaimed, "PFC Haffner - you freakin' suck at this trash. Every time you freakin' have a dog gone cigarette, you will do 5 pullups." And it was so. And it was good.

PFC Haffner continued this until the very next Monday, at which point PFC Haffner did a max set and achieved 9 pullups! The Sgt, with his recently sharpened knife hands, once again cast his deathly visage upon the lowly little PFC Haffner and bellowed, "Good, freakin'...freakin' dog gone Haffner. Now you'll do 5 before your cigarette -- and freakin 5 freakin more after!" PFC Haffner responded, in the position of parade rest, "Aye, Sgt."

The rest of that week and the following were filled with a violent maelstrom of pullups, smoking, and more pull ups.

The following Monday, upon performing a max set, PFC Haffner realised that he was now capable of 14, yes, 14 pull ups. In the span of one month, he had made a gain of 9 pull ups.

Now that I've gotten the funny-ish story part out of the way, lemme break it down a tiny bit more and relate it to only being able to 1 or so (versus 5).

First off, I do not condone smoking in ANY WAY and it in no way helped me do pull ups. The Sgt just noticed that I'd have about 7-8 throughout the work day (pretty much whenever I was outside working, I WAS a PFC after all).

Without having said it the science behind this was pretty simple. He took something I did multiple times a day - that I do EVERY day -- not just some -- and attached pull ups to it. Smoking was something I was guaranteed to do at least 7-8 times a day - so pull ups were naturally attached to it. The first few days I was doing about 35 a day. 7 to 8 sets of 5. A week or so later, it was 70 a day. A week after the end of the little "story" I was doing 10 before a smoke and 10 after.

I ended up hitting 20 basically two months after that first day -- at which point I was allowed to stop with that if I made sure I did at least 50 a day total.

You have to do pull ups more than once a day. I took the weekends off from pull ups (when I didn't have to work, that is). I mean, ****, find SOMETHING you do more than once a day that you can easily and conveniantly attach to pull ups. Everytime you eat -- make a pact with yourself that before you put a bite in your mouth you'll do a damn pull up. Or every time you drink (not alcohol, could get hurt that way) do a damn pull up first.

Moral of the story (to be repetitive, like any good Cpl is): you HAVE to do pull ups many, MANY times a day to make gains fast. That's pretty straight forward. If you can only do one, you should be doing that one pull up every 15 minutes on the dot -- that's what I'd do. Now go GET SOME!

To eliminate future questions and confusion... yes, poolee's... he is telling you to start smoking :p

[Marine84]

Haff that was just funny as hell!