How to Do 15 PULLUPS OR MORE in a Row (GUARANTEED!)

If the idea of doing 15 pullups or more unbroken seems daunting to you, this is the video you need to watch. I’m going to show you the 6 biggest pull-up mistakes that people make that holds them back from reaching their true potential on this amazing back exercise.

What’s up, guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx. com. So,  as you watch this clip of me performing pull-ups, I want you to take note of one thing. I’m going  to perform a bunch of unbroken pull-ups here, and guess what, so can you. As a matter of fact,  no matter how many pull-ups you’re doing right now, I believe that every single one of us,  no matter how big or how small or how strong or weak we might be right now, can do 15 unbroken  pull-ups.

Some can do even 20, and there are some that can do even 25 or more. That is if you  avoid the six big mistakes, I think most of us make when we perform the exercise. We actually  play such a high value on this exercise that we make it part of our Athlean-X Games Competition. And as you can see here, we have a lot of people, different sizes, men and women, different  levels of strength that are just killing these pull-ups. They know how to do them because  they’re avoiding a lot of the mistakes and I want to make sure that not just them, but you know  exactly what they are so you can avoid them.

So, let’s start diving into them one by one. Don’t worry. Even if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get that damn pull-up. So, the first thing  you want to do is make sure that you’re setting up on the bar properly. Because a lot of us do,  we get loose and looseness on a pull-up will destroy your ability to do pull-ups no matter  how strong you are.

So, when you grab this bar, a lot of us probably think when we hang from here  of just basically pulling straight up. I want you to think of basically pulling yourself back just  a little bit, because what that does is it engages the lats and kind of gets them fired up to be  able to do the pulling from here. As opposed to when I’m straight down like this, I’m unpacking  my shoulders and I create all this looseness in my shoulder blades, that’s kind of tough to overcome  when I’m trying to initiate that first pull, it s a lot of wasted energy. And not only that,  but it’s not presetting the lats, so it’s making my arms have to do more of the initial pull here,  which is going to fatigue far faster than it will be if you just set the lats up correctly. All right.

Number two, you got to make sure that your elbows are in the right place. And here  again, people don’t do this because they don’t pay attention to it. When I say get your elbows out  of the cage, what I mean is, what direction are your elbows pointing when you’re standing directly  under the bar or hanging directly from the bar? If you can’t see my elbows when you’re just to the  side of me, it’s because you’ve got them in line with your body and that’s a big mistake. Get them out of the cage.

In other words, get them out in front. What that does is  it puts the shoulder in the scapular plane, which is a healthier position for the shoulder  and one, you’re going to be more optimally positioned to pull with more strength. But it  puts the lats on a little bit more of a stretch, which will also pre engage the lats as we talked  about before, and it gets them in that proper position. So, if my elbows are out in front a  little bit, it kind of sets up that first tip we already talked about more efficiently and  I can pull with a lot more strength because those elbows are where they should be, and the  shoulder feels a lot better because of it. Number three, you got to plug the energy  leaks.

So, I talk about this all the time, the wasted movement is what causes these  pull-ups to become a hell of a lot harder than they are. It’s what makes you feel all 200  plus pounds, if you are a big person trying to do these. It’s what makes even the lighter  people feel every single pound of their body weight. But when you can plug the energy leaks,  it feels like you’re as light as a feather. So, what I’m talking about is when you get  yourself rigid, not just by setting up the lats the way we talked about, by pushing into  the bar.

That helps to stiffen up the scapula, but what about the rest of your body? Well,  it’s really easy to fix and the first thing you want to do is not dangle your feet behind you or  cross your knees and let them dangle behind you, because that creates looseness which you might  have saw when I was doing my pull-ups. I had my feet out in front of me, my legs together, my  feet pointed, my knees straight, my quads tight, my glutes are squeezing, the lats are engaged  where I said they are, my core is tight. So, what that does is it creates one efficient line  of pull. Every bit of force I put down into this bar is going to transfer right through to my  upper body and back down to allow me to do these pull-ups a lot more effortlessly.

I’m telling  you, it’s the most underrated aspect of getting better at pull-ups and it’s something you can do  instantly. Stop being loose contract every muscle in your lower body through your core, you’ll feel  tight, and you’ll fly up and down on this bar. The fourth thing I need you to fix is  what you’re doing with your hands. Not only do you want to put them at about shoulder  width apart, sometimes people go too narrow, and by doing that, they shift all of the load  to the muscles of the forearm to do most of the flexion. You don’t want that.

Get him at least  shoulder width apart. But it’s the direction of force that matters so much. When I’m about  ready to pull myself up, I don’t just think about pulling straight down through the bar like  that, I think about pulling in at the same time that I pull down. Because what that does is it  engages some other adductors of your body. In other words, we know that the chest can  adduct the arm into the side.

The chest is good at adducting the arms towards midline or  pulling in that direction. If we can adduct through the chest this way by squeezing our  hands in and of course, down, we’ve got both the chest and the lats working together to get me  up. Again, that secondary function of the chest to help with adduction is going to make this feel  even lighter and it’s going to keep some more of those energy leaks from creeping in. So, when I’m here, I’m going to pull in and down at the same time, so I’m squeezing in at the  same time that I’m squeezing down. I’m not just pulling straight down like that where if you do  this and then let go of the inward squeeze, you’ll instantly feel a lot heavier.

Pull in and down  at the same time, it’s a real game changer. Mistake number five is having the wrong target  point and not attacking the bar with that target. And what we’re talking about is your  sternum and right at the top of your sternum. And what we do oftentimes is we collapse that  down. All you’re doing is increasing the distance between it and your attack point, which is the  bar.

What I want you to do instead, is try to attack the bar first with your sternum by reaching  for it with your chest. Stop trying to reach with your chin, instead reach with your chest. So, this is what people do when they do it wrong, they start to cave in because they’re trying so  hard. Even if you follow the tip I said with your elbows out in front, they’re trying so hard to get  up that they’re pulling their attack point further away from the bar. What I want you to do is lead  with the attack point because that will keep you back and tight.

So, when you’re here, open it up,  reach for the bar with your sternum. You don’t have to hit it because obviously your chin could  get up and over the bar without having to touch. But by reaching that way, we’re able to create a  more effective attack plan with a closer and more direct line of attack that’s going to get you to  that bar faster with a lot more stability. Mistake