NEVER DO PULL-UPS LIKE THIS! | 10 Most Common Mistakes

The pull-up is one of the most commonly performed, and misperformed, exercises in the gym. In this video, I’m going to show you how to never do them incorrectly again and give you the fixes for the 10 most common pullup mistakes. Whether you can do 10 pull-ups or more now or struggle to do one, you

what’s up guys jeff cavaliere athleanx. com today we’re talking about pull-ups and my one and only goal for you by the time this video is over is to make sure you’re not only doing them right but you’re doing more of them and I don’t care if you’re very advanced that you’re doing a lot of pull-ups right now or if you’ve struggled to even do one if you avoid the ten things I’m showing you here and adopt the alternatives I’m going to show you I promise you you’re gonna start doing more pull-ups starting right away so let’s get right into the first one here your hand placement alright so the first thing you want to make sure you’re not messing up is your grip and I’m talking about the width don’t go too wide and don’t go too narrow narrow is where most people screw this up you want to be right here at about shoulder-width apart if you go in as you see my hands starting to creep in here you dramatically shift the load from the back and the lats to right here the brachioradialis and the forearms which are ill-equipped to handle your bodyweight repetition after repetition in a pull-up when I get my arms in front of my body I’m essentially creating some version of a reverse barbell curl except this time instead of curling a barbell up I’m curling my body up to a bar it doesn’t matter the muscles recruited are the same and if you get those hands a little bit wider just outside of shoulder width you’re going to be in a perfect position to do the pull-up and recruit the muscles best equipped to do this job now that being said the brachioradialis is a muscle that is going to participate in the pull-up we just don’t want it to be the primary focus of the pull-up so what I want you to do is stop ignoring the value of this muscle when it comes to performing the overall move right it still needs to be strong we just don’t want to be the driver of the movement so are you doing enough to strengthen this muscle are you doing enough of these reverse hammer curls really kind of in this pronated position to really recruit those muscles are you doing enough of these to get a stronger form if you’re not I guarantee you just by incorporating a few sets a week into your normal plan right now you’re going to get stronger brachioradialis and stronger forearms that are going to contribute mightily when you go back to this exercise the key here is not overlooking any of the muscles that participate in the overall performance of the move now this was an interesting one when your hands are up on the bar besides caring about how wide apart they are you also should be caring about how you’re gripping the bar because a lot of us will grip and pull straight down what I want you to do is think differently think about how you can pull your hands closer together squeeze them together activate and feel the muscles are your chest engaging because the more activity you can get in your upper body for the pull-up the better you’re going to be at them the more tight you can make your body which is going to happen by squeezing your hands together the better you’re going to be at them this is a theme that’s going to come back here later in this video but try this take your hands and as you see here try to direct the force inward don’t just pull down push in as you do it and promise you’re going to see a dramatic increase in how quickly you’re able to pull yourself up to the bar it’s gonna feel as if you’re almost floating on air and that’s a big difference here because it happens just like that instead of pulling out pull your hands in together and don’t just pull straight down in and down is going to be the key our speaking of that total body tightness how tight are you’re actually keeping yourself when you do the pull-up I mean are you rigid when you’re doing the exercise or are your feet looking like this when you’re in the move right kind of crossing them up letting them dangle down below all of this is no good it’s counterproductive to your ability to do pull-ups and again these are the things you can fix just like this and how do you fix them you do this you focus on these key points when you’re in this position here everything changes you plug what we call the energy leaks and unless you’ve been watching my videos you may not have been doing this and if you have congratulations because I guarantee you’re already doing more pull-ups but it’s key what you want to do here is get rid of that looseness because as you direct your force through that bar you’re actually going to lose that and disperse it out that’s the problem we want to make sure that we’re not so we create rigidity there so whatever force I direct down can go through the kinetic chain and back up and allow me to move my body very efficiently so I point my feet downward by engaging my calves I straightened out my knees by engaging my quads I squeeze the glutes I have my abs engaged much more than just passively hanging there all of these things allow me to stay tight and as soon as I add tightness to the equation here the body starts to fly up and down a lot easier the process has become more fish and my body moves in space with a lot more power and strength if you do this right now again I promise you you’re gonna do more pull-ups regardless of how many you’re doing right now now in an effort to protect the integrity of this exercise you probably are I hope are doing full range of motion you’re allowing yourself to go all the way down so that your elbows actually straighten at the bottom but are you doing this are you unpacking your shoulders are you getting so loose that you can almost touch your biceps to your ears at the bottom because if you are that’s a major problem for the long-term health of your shoulder you’re a lacking shoulder stability in a very vulnerable position so what I want you to do is fix that make sure that even though you go to full extension that you don’t go to an unpacked position you allow yourself to create some space by simply pulling your biceps a little bit away from your ears and that will put your shoulders down and back allow for that space between your ears and your shoulder tips and then from here perform every single repetition so go to full extension but don’t destabilize the shoulder in the process the next thing you might be doing maybe even inverting lee is positioning your elbows in the wrong plane as it relates to your body this way do you have your elbows straight out to the sides because people tell you that if you want to dig your elbows down into your sides to engage your lats or are you doing this instead getting your elbows out in front of your body hopefully it’s the latter you got to put your elbows out in front of your body it actually is biomechanically more favorable to your ability to do the exercise because you’re placing the lats I’m more stretch and atomically we know that if we can get the elbow out in front of the body we’re gonna be in a position to create more stretch than the last and have better recruitment when we need it the most at the bottom of the rep additionally we know that this is something called a scapular plane and in the scapular plane our shoulders just move more naturally instead of fighting that and trying to place your arms back behind your body get them back in the plane that they prefer to be in right here angle slightly forward and your shoulders will feel even better when you do the movement so get those elbows out in front don’t drive them out to the side unnaturally and I promise not just more pull-ups but more healthy pull-ups for the long run the next one here is a common one very comm