Doing more pull ups/ chin ups

[adskibullus]

For the past month I've been doing a bodyweight routine consisting of push ups, sit ups, dips, squats, burpee's and 400 metre sprints for cardio.

After doing a bit of research it seems like madness to neglect the good old fashioned pull up and chin ups, so I got myself down to the local park and tried some chin ups. I was shocked at how bad I am at chin ups. I could do 3 in a row that's it!

How do I do more chin ups? I can do press ups alright. should I just do 3 rep sets until I gt stronger or are there other exercises that I can do to strengthen other muscles to assist with the chin ups.

My goals are to lose the beer belly and just get generally fitter and build better conditioning for judo. The reason for doing bodyweight is that I hate gyms and love the outdoors and I can take the dogs down to the local park do the sprints and there's chin up bars and dip bars so I can get all the exercises done and walk the dogs in one sitting. When I plateau I plan on adding weigt to the exercises using a back pack.

Are there any other exercises that you recommend doing as well?
Cheers I advance

[lordbd]

If pullups are too hard you could use the lat machine at your local gym

[adskibullus]

Yeah I could but that would be admitting defeat. There must be someway to build myself up to do more. Plus the calisthenicskings workouts are awesome and I keep reading how all grapplers should do pull ups and that there better than using lay machines

[TheRuss]

I was shocked at how bad I am at chin ups. I could do 3 in a row that's it!

How do I do more chin ups?

Once I came across a question posted on a popular powerlifting website by a young Marine: how should he train to be able to do more chin-ups? I was amused when I read the arcane and non-specific advice the trooper had received: straight-arm pull-downs, reverse curls, avoiding the negative part of the chin-up every third workout... I had a radical thought: if you want to get good at chin-ups, why not try to do... a lot of chin-ups?

-Pavel Tsatsouline, Chain Yourself to the Squat Rack and Call Me in a Year

Pretty much says it all.

[Urbanassassin]

Pretty much Russ said for the chin ups. Once you can do 15 chin ups pretty easily i would switch to pull ups, as they work your biceps and back a little more.

As for exorcises, don't ignore your abs man. People always think they are just for aesthetics, but your core is important in pretty much any kind of sport/exorcise.

you can also look into buying dumbbells if you hate the gym. Home gyms are pretty easy to make these days if you have say $100 for all the gear.

[Diesel_tke]

Do you have a smart phone or ipod touch? If so, go one there and look for the chin up ap. It should be free. Down load, and you will be on your way.

I am 6ft, 235lbs and right now I am maxing out at 22 strait pullups(not chin ups). About a year ago I was exactly where you are. I could only do about 3 chin ups. I was getting on pull up! So I tried a bunch of these crazy pull up ideas online. Like the Armstrong program, the greasing the groove program, and all those. But I wasn't getting anywhere. I abandoned the Armstrong program because it was too fucking confusing! So I downloaded the free ap, and pulled my way to over 20 strait pullups!

[gregaquaman]

You don't do chin ups to failure because you do 3 and stop. Set a goal of say ten. Do the three stop, do three more, do two, do one and so on.

And you kind of have to do9 it every day to get good at it.

[TheRuss]

Do you have a smart phone or ipod touch? If so, go one there and look for the chin up ap. It should be free. Down load, and you will be on your way.

I am 6ft, 235lbs and right now I am maxing out at 22 strait pullups(not chin ups). About a year ago I was exactly where you are. I could only do about 3 chin ups. I was getting on pull up! So I tried a bunch of these crazy pull up ideas online. Like the Armstrong program, the greasing the groove program, and all those. But I wasn't getting anywhere. I abandoned the Armstrong program because it was too fucking confusing! So I downloaded the free ap, and pulled my way to over 20 strait pullups!

For those without iPhones, I don't suppose you could summarize the advice this app gave you?

[Diesel_tke]

For those without iPhones, I don't suppose you could summarize the advice this app gave you?

Sure. It is a three day a week workout. The first time you do a Max out to judge where you are. Say you can only do 5 reps. It sets you up where you will do 4 sets of 3 reps with one minute rest between sets. Then after the last set you do one set of 4 minimum, but more if you can.

That's it. Then you record your progress as you go along. The ap adjusts the reps higher a little every workout. I just looked at my reps on the log when I started and here is what my first few days looked like:

1 1 1 1 3
1 2 1 1 6
2 2 2 2 4

I know it looks pitiful but this is week 6

4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 10.

So my last set on that one after all those little sets was 10. Not too bad.

A few of the days were sets of higher numbers.

Week 5 day 1

7 8 6 4 8

On some of the reps you may only have a 30 second rest. So the ap does it all for you and you just follow along.

I tried one al that had you doing ladder sets every day. That was tough and not for beginners.

Hope that helps.

[TheRuss]

Thank'ee. Do you know who the publisher is? There are four or five apps along those lines in the Android store.