First of all, let us look at why pull up bar workouts are essential for women too?
- Improves pulling motion in dead lifts.
- Improves overhead mobility.
- Improves grip.
- Better core strength and stability.
- Increases ability to engage and recruit fibers at the back.
Although, pulling off a perfect pull up is no joke, not many people are able to master the art of doing one. It is considered difficult for women to pull since majority of them are not aware of their own fierce strength until they hit the gym and find out.
Tip 1: Hang from The Bar
Start off with just hanging from the bar without worrying about pulling yourself up. This will develop your grip strength and make sure that you feel comfortable with your hands wrapped around the pull up bar. So it’s recommended to wrap the bar right across the pad of your hand, wrap your fingers around it and secure the thumb on the back side. Once you are able to hold the bar around 30 seconds, you are ready to move on to the step 2. But make sure you can hold that firmly and not let your grip slip.
Tip 2: Slight Pull
This step is to get to know your back muscles. It’s really important that you use your back instead of just relying on your arms, instead, you should use your back and take strength from your shoulders rather than your arms. Your lats and shoulders are bigger muscles and carry more strength. A very common mistake with people trying their first pull-up is that they just strain and pull with their arms while letting the back muscles long. It’s also about working your latissimus dorsi muscle, which runs under your arms pit down all the way to you rib cage.
Tip 3: Tighten and Strengthen Your Core Muscles
As you are hanging from the bar think about your ribs in and core tight and when you are actually doing the pull-up, kick your feet up behind you in order to not lose your core known as a Banana Back. Just keep everything tight, because it’s your core’s strength that’s going to help you perform pull-ups. You must know that your core is not just important for the pull-ups, but it helps in everything you do. So make sure your core is the strongest.
Pull your rib cage in and back creating a vacuum inside, this is called a ‘hollow body’, it’s because you want to imagine your stomach is carved and hollow. So pull your ribs in and back keeping everything tight along with your legs, making sure you keep in line with your toes pointed at the end. Now again hold on to the pull-up, without pulling yourself up yet, do just the slight pull of your back and hold your body making it one strong block.
Tip 4: Jump up & Slow Negative
Just to the top of the bar with chin over the edge of the bar while keeping your back muscles down with crunching of the traps slowly lower yourself down. Take at least four seconds and up to eight seconds on your decent that means you shouldn’t hit the bottom before you are able to count four. Do 3-10 reps of these. Depending on your fitness levels you should do at least 3 reps.
Tip 5: Pull ups
Finally, you’re ready for your actual pull up! While you are trying to do this, remember previous 4 steps like engaging your lats, keeping your core tight, chin over the pull-up bar without using too much arm. Remember all these steps and believe in yourself and give it a go, know that you can do this. With time and practice you will get stronger and you will be able to do as many reps as you believe that you can.
Special Tip
Remember that under hand pull-up is easier than overhand pull ups. So start off with underhand pull-ups and when you have enough strength you can switch to over hand pull-ups.
