Question: I can do a lot of bench dips, but I can’t do one on the parallel bars. I would also like to be able to do pull-ups, but can barely do one. I work out at home and do not have a pulldown or dip machine or an assisted pull-up and dip machine, just a power rack with a pull-up bar and a dip attachment. What can I do to work up to being able to do these exercises?
Answer: There are two things you can do to improve your ability to perform these and other bodyweight exercises. The first is to strengthen the muscles involved using other exercises and modifying the exercise to make it easier. The second is to decrease the amount of weight you have to lift, either with assistance from other muscle groups, using elastic bands, or by losing body fat unless you are already very lean.
To strengthen the muscles you use to perform parallel bar dips you can perform push-ups, bench presses, chest flys and lying triceps extensions. To strengthen the muscles you use to perform pull-ups you can perform bodyweight rows using a waist-high bar, bent over rows, pullovers, and arm curls.
Chin-ups and dips on the UXS bodyweight multi-exercise station
I recommend starting with chin-ups (shoulder-width underhand grip) rather than pull-ups (wide overhand grip). A closer, underhand grip puts your biceps in a stronger position and involves other muscle groups like your chest and rear delts more, making the exercise easier. This also makes the chin-up (and close, underhand grip pulldown) a better choice for building strength in general than the pull-up (and wide, overhand or parallel grip pulldown) which isolates the lats more.
There are three ways you can make dips and chin-ups easier while working up to doing them normally. The first and simplest is to place a bench, stool, or step ladder below you and use your legs for assistance. Provide as little assistance with your legs as required to perform the lifting phase or “positive” of each repetition, then try to perform the lowering phase or “negative” with no assistance from your legs.
Performing these exercises with assistance from your legs is much safer than using an elastic band to reduce the amount of weight you lift since there is no risk of the band slipping or breaking and striking you. Unlike bands, which provide progressively less assistance as you go higher, you can provide as much or little assistance with your legs as you require over the full range of motion.
You can also perform negative-only repetitions, performing all of the positive work with your legs, carefully handing off your weight from your legs to your arms while holding yourself motionless at the top or “end point” of your range of motion, then very slowly lowering yourself with your arms, attempting to take a full ten seconds to perform the negative. If you do this, be very careful not to jump up during the positive or shift the weight from your legs to your arms too quickly, and stop when you are not able to hold yourself motionless at the end point when handing off or able perform the negative slowly enough to take at least five or six seconds.
Another way to make these easier is to reduce the range of motion, only performing the easier top half of the dip and bottom half of the chin-up. Gradually increase the range as you become stronger until you are performing full-range repetitions. If you still need to make it easier you can stop and rest for a few seconds between reps. This is called rest-pause training. Gradually reduce the rest time as you become stronger until you are performing the repetitions continuously.
You should perform these at the beginning of your workouts, starting with the one you have the most difficulty with, or after starting with a leg exercise like barbell or bodyweight squats.
To learn more about how to perform chin-ups, pull-ups, and dips and how to reduce or increase the difficulty of these and other bodyweight exercises read Project Kratos: Bodyweight High Intensity Training Program Handbook and watch my bodyweight high intensity training discussion and demo video.
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Hey Drew,
You mentioned that pull-ups (overhand grip) isolate the lats more than chin-ups. I remember reading in Darden’s “The New HIT” that chin-ups work the lats harder since your biceps are in a stronger position, whereas in a pull-up the weaker muscles of the forearms and biceps will give out sooner, providing less stimulation for the lats ?
I’m sure performing both is a good idea for achieving maximum strength and size of the lats but just wanted to clear this up.
Hey Sam,
During a pull-up the lats have to work harder because the biceps are in a weaker position and the chest, rear delts, and other muscles are not providing assistance. As long as the grip is only slightly outside of shoulder width and not extremely wide the range of motion is not reduced significantly, as is often claimed. Also, if you perform pull-ups with a parallel grip rather than an overhand grip the biceps are not put in a weaker position.
I recommend performing both, as they each have a slightly different effect, with the chin-up being more of an overall upper-body exercise and the pull-up isolating the lats a little more. If someone can’t do pull-ups, however, I recommend working on chin-ups first.
Drew,
I don’t know if this is pertinent here but, as I was reading these comments, I wondered if certain segment of an exercise’s range of motion recruits certain muscles more than the other segment/s of the same exercise (like, for example, and I realize maybe not correct: does the top segment of a chin-up recruit mainly the biceps? does the bottom segment of a chin-up recruit mainly the lats?) and if so, would it be helpful to train (when a beginner and/or a more advanced trainee, if at all) a given segment (not necessarily the strongest segment, but that which targets more a given muscle/group) of an exercise in order to achieve a specific goal (building up to one chin-up, or otherwise)?
If so, what sources should I read to learn which muscles are exercised mostly at specific segments of a given exercise’s (chin-ups, push-ups) range of motion?
Thanks.
Hey JLMA,
The relative contribution of the different muscles involved in an exercise changes over the range of motion due to a variety of factors, including changes in leverage and muscle length. The degree of variation depends on the exercise and the range of motion used, and may be slight or extreme.
In the case of chin-ups both the biceps and lats are working over the full range of motion, although the resistance they encounter will vary. The biggest difference is in the involvement of other muscle groups like the chest and rear delts.
I don’t know of any books which specifically address this, but I will be writing about it in Elements of Form. The best books on this would be basic biomechanics texts like Joint Structure and Function by Levangie and Norton, and anything you can find by Stanley Plagenhoef.
For someone who can do a few, but not many unassisted chin ups, what do you think of the idea of doing as many unassisted as possible and then moving into negatives?
Brian,
I have some clients do this if they are already capable of performing at least a few chin ups in strict form, but usually only have them do two or three negatives rather than continuing to eccentric muscular failure.
Hello!
How about making pull-ups/chin-ups harder with pre-exhaustion? I’ve been using additional weights, but I want try out pre-exhausting. Gym, where I’m going, doesn’t have pullover machine, and the dumbbell pullover just feels odd, so I’m asking is there any other exercise to isolate lats more for pre-exhausting?
If there isn’t… How to perform dumbbell pullover the right way?
Chief,
If you don’t have a properly-designed pullover or behind-neck lat machine the best option is pullovers with a dumbbell or barbell. I recommend using a shorter range of motion and performing the upper turnaround when the arms are still around thirty degrees from vertical to keep the tension on the lats high, and holding for a few seconds in the stretched position.
I’m still struggling with how to get the correct amount of training with my HIT. I’ve been doing the big 5 once a week, but I also want to work on my bodyweight exercises – dips & pull-ups. Is it okay to workout twice a week (1: Big 5, 2: body weight), or will that be too much? Also, could I add a third day of lower intensity accessory work?
Hey Rita,
Yes, most people are able to train the whole body two or three times a week without overtraining, so adding an extra day or two of bodyweight training isn’t going to hurt your progress and may even improve it. If you find you are not progressing on three days you’re better off reducing the volume of the workouts or cutting back to two rather than reducing the intensity of one of your workouts.
Drew
What is the best way to improve performance or number of reps for pull ups/chin ups? I used to be able to do like 8-10 good pull ups and a dozen chin ups – mini sets or add negatives on to your max positive reps?
Thanks
Hey Jim,
One approach you may want to try is to use rest-pause to continue beyond momentary muscular failure until you’ve reached your target repetition number, starting with a long rest pause, around 10 to 15 seconds, then gradually reduce this as you get stronger until you are performing them continuously.
Hi!
Dumbbell pullover just keeps feeling odd, even after several tries in different workouts. And the barbell version… It was even worse. Should I keep only my upper back on the bench thus being side ways (the old-school way) or should I lie on the bench normally and just keep my head slightly out of the bench? Or how? This is for dumbbell version. And should I keep my arms totally straight while doing this?
I’m going to try a variation of this movement (pullover). It’s a cable-pullover done in incline bench with little bit wider grip than shoulder width. Arms slightly hooked and starting position is above my head, ending position around my waist. The angle of the bench (incline) is to maintain “full ROM” and to decrease stress on shoulders. Just lie down, and do pullover. I hope you get what I’m trying to say. Opinion?
Hey Chief,
The problem with the free weight pullover is the resistance curve is way off from the strength curve of the muscles involved. You are weakest at the start and ends of the movement and strongest in the middle, but when performing pullover with a dumbbell or barbell you are only able to work the bottom half of your range of motion from the start to the middle, and the resistance is highest at the start where you are weaker, and easiest at the end, which is the middle of your range of motion where you’re strongest. It’s not a bad exercise, but it’s far from optimal.
If you don’t have a good pullover machine a straight arm cable pullover is a better option. This can be performed as you describe on an incline bench, or standing using an overhead pulley, standing far enough back and leaning far enough forward that your upper arms are perpendicular to the cable at your strongest position.
Aren’t negative Chins too taxing on the body? What about recovery? Also do negative chins alone build our lats and biceps (without having to do regular chins)?
Hey Oskar,
Whether an exercise is too taxing depends on the individual, how they perform the exercise, how much resistance they’re using, how much volume, and other factors. If you perform them correctly either normal or negative-only chin-ups are effective for training the lats and biceps.
People keep saying do negative chins and then progress toward the real one. But that’s neither here nor there – so many things like how many negatives, do we go to failure. More importantly, what if we’re stuck at a certain number – say day in and day out I can only do 5 negatives, how will that help me do a real chin later? How to break such plateaus?
Most peopel dont go indepth, it’s always the same adivce: do negatives, do negatives.
Hey Ahmed,
Negatives should be performed for about the same amount of time as regular repetitions (about 60 to 90 seconds, between six and nine ten-second reps). When performing negative-only training momentary muscular failure is defined as the point in the exercise where you are no longer able to lower yourself as slowly as prescribed. The number of negative-only repetitions a person must be able to perform before they can perform a normal chin-up or pull-up depends on the individual.
If you are having difficulty with this, I recommend performing the leg-assisted chin-ups or pull-ups as described in the article. I also recommend reading the Project Kratos Bodyweight High Intensity Training book which explains how the difficulty of exercises like these can be scaled to accommodate people with different levels of strength.
Drew, I appreciate what you do. But most people lie about these things. Fitness is largely genetic and no amount of hard work is gonna get us there. This is why a fat guy can bench a lot but will struggle to do even one chin. It is all about muscle-fat ratio, which genetics determines. The body is comfortable at a certain weight and at a certain body fat level and also at a certain level of muscle mass. With that only certain exercises are possible. Else, why would steroids be so popular?
Do u agree or not?
No Ahmed, I do not agree.
While genetics dictates how far you can go and how much you will ultimately be able to do in terms of muscular strength, size, endurance, cardiovascular and metabolic conditioning, and flexibility, our body composition can be changed dramatically and any healthy person can get relatively lean if they train and eat properly, regardless of how much fat they start out with.
Hi Drew, what do u think of the range of motion – midrange to top or bottom to midrange – which one targets lats the most? Is it really necessary to do full range when half range gives similar benefits?
Hey Al,
I cover this and almost everything else you need to know about bodyweight high intensity training in my book Project Kratos.
Hi,
Im a female i can only do assisted pull ups and chin ups by taking half of the weight down on pull up machine.Unassisted i can only hang to thebar but cant pull my self up.
Can you please tell me how i can do clean un assisted pullups.
How manytimes i have to do this per week.
Hey Mona,
You can progress to unassisted chin-ups and pull-ups using the weight-assisted chin-up and pull-up machine by gradually reducing the amount of weight used for assistance as you get stronger. If you are just starting out I recommend workout out two to three times per week on non-consecutive days, but you may need to reduce this depending on how quickly your body recovers from and adapts to exercise. For more on bodyweight training in general and chin-ups and pull-up specifically I recommend reading my bodyweight high intensity training handbook Project Kratos.
Excellent advice, Drew. Really appreciate it.
Just a quick question: I can currently do 4 pullups maximum – any trick to increase it to 10 in quick time? I am not fat and my pushing strength is good – I do weighted dips quite easily. So it’s not like I am weak or fat. Still pullups are so hard I struggle to get even 5.
Any idea why there’s so much gap between my pushing and pulling strength, any tips to improve?
Thanks so much, Drew. You’re an amazing coach.
Don’t worry about how many you do, focus instead on doing them as well as possible. Go very slow (I usually take 20 to 30 seconds to perform a single rep), focus on reversing directly smoothly, and hold briefly and squeeze at the top. Keep track of how long you can do them continuously instead of how many you do, using a stopwatch. If you focus more on how many you can do instead of how well you do them you will tend to do them even less effectively and progress more slowly. If you focus on how well you do them instead of how many you do you will benefit more from them, and see more progress despite not focusing on reps.
For more on this read How To Get Better At An Exercise.
Thanks so much, Drew. If I take 10 seconds to pull myself up and 10 to come down, then I would probably complete only one or two reps? Would that still help in the long run, considering such ultra-low volume?
Forget about repetitions entirely and just focus on time under load.
Exercise volume isn’t about sets and reps, it is about effort over time. Doing two reps in forty seconds is more stressful than ten in twenty seconds because the muscles are under tension longer.