The Pull-Up

There are few things involving bodyweight-only movements more impressive than the ability to do a ton of pull-ups. Even doing just one pull-up is something most people can't manage. I've had several prospective new clients come into the gym, confident in their fitness and able to do good push-ups, squats, and claim a 2x bodyweight deadlift, who have to say "I can't do a pull-up" when we get to that portion of the introductory session.

And there isn't a good reason why, apart from the obvious fact that they never spent any time developing that capacity. Which is a pity, because besides making you generally fit and, in the vanity department, making your back and biceps look great, being able to pull your bodyweight up, onto, and (transitioning to a muscle-up) over an obstacle can be pretty useful. Whether you're rescuing a kitten from a tree or scaling a wall to escape a pack of brain-crazed undead after the Zombie Apocalypse, the pull-up will come in handy. Also, you cannot be a ninja if you can't do a pull-up.

More practically, pulling yourself up to reach something, or climbing into the attic when there's no ladder handy, or onto the roof of your garage to retrieve a badly thrown frisbee, are also things you can't do if you can't do a pull-up.

There are several variations of the pull-up, and they're all useful training tools. Here's the basic, strict pull-up:

Generally, a pull-up with a pronated (palms facing away) grip is actually called a "pull-up," while a supinated grip (palms facing toward your body) is called a "chin-up." Really, both are just variations of the pull-up, as is using a mixed grip (one palm facing you, one facing away). Making these little changes to grip alters the work loads placed on the involved muscles, which makes all of them useful. In a supinated grip, your biceps are asked to do a little more of the work.

The variation we use most often is the kipping pull-up, and we use it because it lets the athlete do more work. Basically, your hips are used to produce force to help push you over the bar. This does several things:

• Reduces the workload on the muscles traditionally involved in a pull-up, allowing you to do more of them. 
• Builds overall pull-up strength, especially in new athletes... doing lots of kipping pull-ups improves your capacity to do strict pull-ups, usually faster than just doing strict pull-ups.
• Improves your overall coordination and timing.
• Allows us to build metabolic conditioning workouts involving dozens and dozens, sometimes a hundred or more, pull-ups and get them done in under a day (usually, under an hour).
• Gets you accused of "cheating" in your pull-ups by meatheads who don't know or understand any of the above (and, probably, bounce up and down through 1/3 range of motion and never get over the bar when they do their "real pull-ups.")

Here's an example of  the kipping pull-up, with an exaggerated swing, and with the video slowed down so you can see what's going on:

But wait, there's more! So, when we talk about "kipping pull-ups," we're almost always talking about what's called the gymnastic kip (so-called because it's taken from and used often in the sport of gymnastics, for many things besides doing pull-ups). There is another form of kip, called the butterfly kip. This kip differs from the gymnastic kip in some important aspects:

• It uses less drive from the hip, requiring your back, shoulders, and arms to do more of the work.
• It takes less time, meaning each individual rep is faster and thus, you can (theoretically) improve your power output.
• It is, for most, harder to master (I'm still working on really getting it nailed, though I can crank out a few).
• Until you do master it, it feels like you're going to smash your face into the bar.

That last one is a big obstacle for most folks; the trick is to get "over" the bar (that is, above it) while you're still well behind the bar in your cyclical motion. If you're doing it correctly, your path is much more "up-and-down" than "back-and-forth," and you shouldn't pass far under the bar, if at all.

Here's what the butterfly kip looks like... my butterfly is not great yet, so I thought I'd post a tutorial vid from someone much better than I am at pull-ups :-) :

You can also weight the pull-up to improve your maximal pulling strength. Usually, these are done as a strict pull-up, mostly because nearly every method you might use to add weight to your body makes the motion of kipping impractical (or downright hazardous). However, a weight vest which fits snugly to the body and doesn't impede the range of motion in your shoulders would let you add weight to your kipping pull-ups.

Finally, there is the elusive one-armed pull-up. This is a mark of serious strength, and honestly not everyone necessarily will be able to build their strength to this point. However, barring permanent limitations which cannot be addressed through training (such as permanent injuries, etc.) everyone can develop the capacity to do a basic pull-up. Just for fun, here's a video of someone busting out one-armed pull-ups:

So, there you have it. The Pull-Up, definitely one of the best movements to have in your training arsenal! I'll leave you with our athlete, Holly, nailing her first ever kipping pull-ups:

Kids Know (How To) Squat

Now that little Billy has mastered the Squat, he's decided to
work on his Double Unders.

There are a great many things which we seem to forget as we get older; that there are monsters under the bed, that it's perfectly fine to drink from the garden hose, and that there are probably definitely elves living in the woods behind the house. On the more practical side, we seem to forget how to move.

Watch little kids getting on with getting around, exploring and, particularly, picking stuff up. While I can't find any good studies to cite on this (so far, watch for updates to this post!), my personal guess would be the process of teaching the body to move around through trial and error and experience tends to result in the most economical ways to balance, exert force, and coordinate. I think that, because we ("we" being Homo Sapiens Sapiens) have had these bodies for so long, these ways of moving exhibit, and probably developed, the proper alignment and positioning of our joints.

The upshot of this is, little kids tend to have naturally good squat and deadlift form. Watch this little girl, at 1:01, pick up the soccer ball:

Now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that one should load their 3 year old up with a weighted back squat. Kids are constantly working to improve their motor skills and master new movements (so a dramatic challenge to their stability is a terrible idea), plus their skeletal structure is still soft and growing. Serious resistance training should wait until puberty, though in the years immediately preceding, I think it's fine to start to practice the motions with lighter, manageable weights.

(Clearly, this dad didn't feel the need to wait that long, but thankfully his little girl's barbell is mostly air).

The real question here is why, if when left to our natural development we learn to move correctly, so many of us walk into a gym and have no idea how to execute these movements?

The answer is, I think, we stop practicing. Instead of squatting, we sit in upright chairs (a very unnatural rest-position for the body). Instead of being aggressively physically interactive with our world (i.e., going outside to play), we sit and play videogames (or, if you're a little bit older than I am, just watching TV). We sit in cars. Even reading (which, don't get me wrong, I'm a BIG fan of) is a much more sedentary "activity" that what our bodies are built for, and are expecting (from a genetic point of view) to be put through during our formative years and through adulthood.

And so, our hamstrings tighten, our hip flexors become less flexy, our balance decays, and then one day we decide to take our fitness in hand, go into the gym, and get irritated with that stupid jerk of a coach who keeps saying "go lower." :-)

If you're reading this at all, you're probably interested in or already taking great steps to undo this neglect. So, try to take it a few steps further, and move your body through these ranges of motion even when you're not at the gym. When you put a DVD in the player, don't bend over at the waist, squat. Take a break from sitting at your desk and get up and move around... maybe, even, take a call or two while you're resting in the bottom of the squat (if you're afraid this will get you weird looks, just close the door. It's what I did when I was a desk jockey).

Play. Get out and move around and play. Pick a sport. If you feel like you suck at sports, find some friends who also suck at them and you can all go play badly together (in reality, of course, it's probably something you haven't practiced and you'll learn and improve as you go, the way people do). If you have kids, go play with them, too.

Take time to stretch a bit, every day. If a day goes by that you haven't made time to do anything else, at least move all your joints through their full range of motion at least a few times per day. A few minutes in the morning and at night is all it would take to bust out 10-15 squats, and grab a broom and do some shoulder pass-throughs.

And, for the sake of our species, don't let your kids (if you have them) forget how to move. Encourage their physical activity, let them explore sports. One of the best things you could possibly do for you child's lifelong fitness (whether they're a boy or girl) is get them into gymnastics when they're young. I'm not saying force them into anything, by any means. But, kids tend to like to do physical stuff, as long as it stays fun. A good kids' gymnastics program will look much more like structured recess than athletic training.

Now, for additional evidence (and your probable amusement), here are some more vids of kids busting out good form (one of them sideways)...

What Drives You? Start Pushing the Button.

There are some absolute truths about physical fitness. If you challenge the strength of a muscle, tax its ability to produce force, it will respond by improving that ability. If you challenge the capacity of your heart and lungs to deliver oxygen to tissues, those systems will adapt by improving that capacity. If you learn how to execute biomechanically sound movements properly and incorporate them into your training, you can use them at high intensity with a relatively high degree of safety, and thus push the limits of your body's physical capabilities, most of which will then improve as a result.

The same is true of nutrition. While new knowledge is constantly uncovered, there are some long-standing and scientifically backed principles about what best feeds the human body. We need protein, we need essential fats, we need vitamins and minerals. We need minimal sugars (our bodies can actually make what we need, we don't require any dietary sugars). Whether you eat Paleo, or follow the Zone diet, or the South Beach diet, or just follow Mom's advice and eat your vegetables, if you're eating real, whole food which includes good protein, plenty of stuff that grows, and not too much sugar you're probably pretty OK.

The nice thing about physical activity and nutrition as it applies to training is that, as a coach, they're relatively easy to share. If you know the squat is a fantastic training movement, and you know how to properly execute a squat, you can show someone a squat, talk them through squatting, watch them, help them correct their form until it is consistently excellent, and then they can go and do it (preferably with intensity). Once they're out of your care, they may never do it again, but that's up to them. You've done your job; they can squat.

The same is true for nutrition. People can be taught about the importance of omega-3 fatty acids, and about the dangers of hyperinsulinemia. They can be provided access to studies and anecdotal information to support the dietary guidelines provided. As their coach, I'm not in a position to actually control their diets, but I can offer them the information.

But, there is a third component to fitness, certainly important and if you are or have hopes to be a competitor in some sport, vital. I'm speaking, of course, about the mental/emotional aspects; about motivation, persistence, and drive.  I touched on it a bit in this blog post about resolve, but while being resolved to do the work even when it sucks will take you to a very high level of fitness, there's more to it than that. What I want to talk about here, specifically, is what keeps you going in the middle of a tough workout (and they're all tough, or they should be), and what makes you push your hardest.

As a coach, the mental aspect of training is a little harder to instruct about than movement or nutrition. There's only so much I can do to motivate someone... most of that has to come from within. If you've ever been a competitive athlete and enjoyed it (or, indeed, been competitive in any activity), you probably already know what will most strongly drive you to push your hardest... maybe it's besting your previous performance, or maybe it's beating the guy or girl who beat you last time. If you've never been a contender, as it were, it might be harder to get into "the zone" and keep pushing your hardest when you're exhausted, your muscles are on fire, you're dripping with sweat, and there're still 3 rounds to go.

I do my best to motivate my athletes... for some, it's encouragement. For others, it's calling them out for resting. For others still, yelling at them about how much harder someone else is working does the trick.

I wasn't an athlete in my younger years, and the only activity in which I was competitive was playing chess. And, while it was extremely fun, success in that for me came with a passionless and calm analysis of the board and movement permutations. I've found this detached approach to be not at all helpful in my pursuit of fitness. When I took an interest in fitness, I would do the workout, but when it started to suck, my intensity dropped way off. My "try" dialed way down. I thought this was just normal, and just kept training.

Then, one day, when I was training at a small (and now vanished) MMA gym (doing endless round knee drills, as I recall), the coach thought we were flagging and said something along the lines of, "come on, you fairies!"

Now, that was and is really offensive. It's homophobic, ignorant, and the kind of comment I'm usually prepared to address at length when made in my presence. Specifically to that situation, though, the fact that it presumed that being gay makes a person less capable (my coach had no idea I actually was gay) made me furious, and seriously pushed a button inside... how dare he judge me! How dare he think I can't work as hard, or doubt my capability! And I worked my ass off, like I never had at any physical endeavor before.

Now, I'm not recommending that you have people shout bigoted remarks at you (I tried it, actually... asked my training partners to call me names, but knowing they didn't actually have contemptuous and bigoted opinions about me meant their comments just made me laugh, they didn't push my buttons). But, it turns out that for me someone thinking I'm less, thinking I can't get it done, most strongly pushes my button. So, I'm constantly trying to find new ways to push it, and to find new buttons. The point here is, I was years and years into my pursuit of fitness before I even realized I had such a button. So, it's possible you're missing out on whatever it is that'll make you work your hardest.

So, if you haven't found it, experiment. The workouts which really go amazingly well, try to remember what fueled you. Was the it athlete next to you whom you were trying to keep up with? Was it watching the clock tick up to your previous time? Were you thinking about the useless and frustrating meeting your asinine boss made you sit through for three hours that day?

Try listening to different kinds of music before or during training, watching videos on youtube of folks doing the workout you're going to do, or thinking about how incredibly infuriating those voice response customer service robo-call centers are... whatever it takes. If you don't know what your buttons are, find them, and find a way to push them. Because I promise that everyone has a button, because we're all as much emotional creatures as we are rational ones, and there will always be for everyone a way to get into that state of mind which will have you ignoring that urge to put the bar down when the workout starts to really suck.

Here are some links to stuff which might help you find your way into the zone...

Lisbeth Darsh's wise words on Using the Dark Side and Seizing the Moment.
A post on unlearning limitations from Marsha at Strong Is the New Skinny.
A video that many of my friends have found to be inspiring.
A mess of quotations about effort.
The music of Linkin Park and Disturbed, the two bands whose music I find best for working out.