Pull-ups effectively work the upper traps, lats, rhomboids, and other deep muscles, as well as our shoulders and biceps, although we try to minimize the involvement of our arms in the movement. This exercise also helps in developing forearms and grip strength, and if you are a beginner and struggle with this, following the scheme below will significantly reduce that problem. However, I will not describe the technique of pull-ups; we have plenty of articles on this topic on our channel, and I will leave links below in the form of a small list.
Today, I want to share with you my training scheme for the back, or rather, a method I personally applied which allows me to increase the number of pull-ups in one set, in other words, to progress in this exercise and increase the weight of the load. If you are a beginner, you are most likely working without weights (and you should apply it only after reaching 15-20 repetitions), while you are working with your own weight, which is also not insignificant. Often, at the beginning of the journey, your results in this exercise are quite modest.
The scheme below, designed for three days, will allow you to quickly begin progressing; this has been proven through personal experience, and I made a significant leap thanks to it, increasing the quality of my repetitions in the exercise from 10-12 to 20 in just a couple of months, while I was coming off a cut, and my weight gradually increased even though my strength was growing. Since I train on a two-day split 4 times a week, I simply included pull-ups in three of my four workouts (the scheme will be below), using various training protocols and thus broke through my plateau.
Importantly, the main rule here also applies – if you want to learn to do something, do it more often. And this works best in exercises, especially with your own weight. So, if you want to learn how to do pull-ups, and currently you can't even do three, just do it every other day; include pull-ups, or push-ups, depending on your goal, and do them in each training session. And of course, do not forget about overall back training; my training plan hasn't changed, and I still train my back twice a week, with two exercises + shrugs. You can read about this in our previous article.
So, the scheme itself includes three training days with pull-ups (you can include them on any training day), resulting in three workouts a week every other day and plus two rest days:
On the first day, perform the exercise with a standard grip on the bar, with proper technique, taking your time, everything by the standard. Usually, this variant is my first basic exercise for lats on back day, doing 5 sets for maximum repetitions. Don't forget, if the number exceeds 15-20, start adding weight. If you can't do even one pull-up, still try; just hang, use the negative phase, etc. I will attach a couple more links to articles about pull-ups here.
On the second day, it is already an intermediate training day (legs-delts, for me) between back workouts, and here I use the cluster technique at the very end of the workout. I've already talked about what a cluster system is; a link will also be below, but the essence is simple – I do the first set classically, as a warm-up, so to speak, then 3 sets according to the cluster system (max*4). That is, I do 4 pull-ups with a standard grip, rest for 10 seconds, another 4 for 10 seconds, and then another 4. And so on for the maximum number of clusters (such 4-repetition mini-sets). Then I rest for the usual 2-3 minutes and repeat the set (a total of 3 sets + the first warm-up one).
On the third day, again is back day, and here I use pull-ups "for exhaustion", also as the very last exercise after doing barbell rows, dumbbell rows, shrugs, and as a "finisher," using one set of 50 repetitions, with 30 seconds of rest and a minimal number of sets. In other words, I need to do 50 pull-ups with the minimum number of sets to the bar and 30 seconds of rest between these sets. It looks something like this: 20 pull-ups, rest for 30 seconds, another 15, again 30 seconds of rest, 10 pull-ups, and then one final approach to do 5 pull-ups.
This is ideally, usually it doesn't turn out that smoothly, and the number of sets may be more or less; it will be very hard towards the end, but you have to make your 50, no matter what, even if it takes 20 sets. Of course, if you can do 3 or 5 pull-ups, you can reduce it to 30; the main thing, based on personal experience, is that you should spend at least 4 sets on this. If you manage earlier, either you need additional weight, or increase the total to 70 or 100.
And yes, I forgot to add, I do pull-ups with a parallel grip in this system, not classically. You can, by the way, use a parallel grip on the second day, and on the third, a reverse grip, or only a reverse grip on the third day if you don’t have a good pull-up bar with bars (for the parallel grip), but only a straight one. Or you can do everything classically, but changing your grip will also help target slightly different muscle areas, and it will be easier.