Density Pull Up Training

Whether you're a combat athlete or just someone into training hard, everyone wants to crank up to their pull up numbers (or at least you should!) and the BEST way to do that is through frequent practice with a lot of QUALITY reps. As said before, you should be eating pull ups for BREAKFAST! In order to get good at anything you have to get alot of practice, right? Strength is no different, and you need to remember that its a SKILL. You won't get better at pull ups by just doing them once a week, or worse never at all. The solution is a method that Wake Forest Strength Coach Ethan Reeve developed for his wrestlers when he used to Coach at UTC and Ohio State. Basically he would have his wrestlers start off a with a goal of 100 reps EVERY DAY in 20 minutes by doing 5 pull ups on the minute, every minute for 20 minutes. Over the course of several months, the amount of time to acheieve the 100 reps took less and less until eventually every single one of his wrestlers could do the 100 reps in 10 minutes (10 reps on the minute)!

While THAT much volume and frequency may not be necessary for alot of the people reading this, you can take the same idea and make it more applicable to your goals and current fitness/strength levels.

For example, outside of your regular strength training sessions, include 3 weekly pull up sessions and start with a 20 minute time limit. If you can do 5 pull ups or less, then doing 20 sets of 2 on the minute would be a good start, 10 or less 3 on the minute, and if you're a 15+ pull up guy then start with doing 5 on the minute.

So Our Volume would as follows
5 pull ups or less: 40 total reps
10 pull ups or less: 60 total reps
15+ pull ups: 100 total reps

The eventual goal is to over time, get your alloted reps in 10 minutes. Only when you can get all of your reps done on the minute do you increase your reps and drop the time - remember, QUALITY is what we're after here and there's no need to rush the process.