Welcome to week 2 of phase 2. Phase 2 is only a three week phase before the hell of phase 3 starts so I hope you are enjoying it and feeling good.

I had an article in mind to write today, but it will have to wait until Wednesday. I was in the gym this morning and saw something that I had to comment on. There was a guy trying to do pull ups and failing miserably.

The guy was a light guy and clearly strong, but not able to get more than 2 or 3 reps.

Let me start by saying that pull ups are the king of body weight exercises. Body weight exercise, as a supplement to lifting, is fantastic and the pull up is a great way to engage your back and lats. The trick is, you have to know how to do them. Of all the things I see being done wrong in the gym, pull ups are in the top 5 for sure.

Check out Franco’s back to see which muscles should be activated during the pull up.

I think the reason pull ups are so often fucked up is because no one is taught to do them properly. After all, it looks pretty simple. Here is a bar. Pull yourself up. How hard is that? It’s not even a workout that people think of looking at form videos for. Like the pushup, people have seen it done their whole lives and just assume it is the simple motion it looks like. But as we spoke about in the second part of the How To Lift series, you have to lift with your muscles.

The thing I see so many people screw up with pull ups is that they are generating the energy from their hands and arms. While a pull up will work your biceps they ARE NOT an arm and much less a hand or wrist exercise. They are meant for the back and lats.

So, let’s go through the proper way to do pull ups as the Toxic Masculinity Program has you doing them quite a bit and they only work if you do them correctly.

The Pull Up will work all of the pull muscles in your body to one degree or another but the back and lats are really the primary goal. If, by the end of phase 4 of Toxic Masculinity you can’t crank out 10 pull ups there is a problem. You will have, at that point, spent 14 weeks doing enough rows to make you strong enough to accomplish this easily so if you can’t it is a problem with your form.

Here are some of the most common mistakes with form in pull ups.

1) Momentum. I am going to be very clear here. If you are doing a kipping pull up you are a

huge wussy and your mom thinks you’re a pansy. I won’t blame you if you have or are currently doing this because I never let you know, but from this moment on any kipping in your pull up will immediately disqualify you from the WBF program as well as from eating

If this is how you do your pull ups you have no penis.

steak. Further, all of your future sexual encounters will revolve you being pegged.

Now that you know not to do any kipping (for those of you who don’t know this term it is the swinging of the legs and torso to generate momentum for the pull up) keep this further step in mind…stay stationary. While the pull up is a body weight exercise, it is still a lift. Your body should be still other than the muscles being engaged to perform the task.

2) Half Lift’n. Everyone on Team WBF knows better than to half squat. If you half squat I will show up in your gym and kick your ass — no matter where in the world you are. But remember that with pull ups there is a full range of motion. What is the pull up range of motion? A pull up consists of going from a dead hang with arms just before being locked out and then raising the body until the chin is just over the bar in a controlled fashion. If you aren’t going to do the full range of motion please do me a favor and don’t bother doing the lift…also, get an Anne Taylor charge card and buy yourself some pretty dresses.

3) Elbow Position. Be mindful of where your elbows are when you are doing a pull up. If you push them out in front of your body the stress is removed from your lats and placed on your biceps, brachialis and forearms instead. This is the primary reason people have trouble completing sets. You just don’t have the same strength in the small muscles of the arm as you do in the back. If you put the bulk of your pull up on the arm muscles you will never be able to do as many reps and even if you could they wouldn’t have any impact on the muscles you are aiming for.

4) Shoulder Rotation In some ways the pull up is like an opposite shrug and we all know that rotating our shoulders during shrugs is a one way trip to the hospital. You do not want to rotate your shoulders at all during the movement as it takes stress off the lats (which is the

Correct

fucking goal of the pull up in the first place) and puts it on your rotator cuff. Of all the stupid injuries I have had, rotator cuff has not been one of them because I do my lifts correctly. I have been told, however, that it is not a very fun injury to have. Avoid this problem right from the start. At the bottom position, the dead hang, pull your shoulders down and back and lead with your chest. Keep it that way the entire time you are doing pull ups.

5) Using Your Hands I get the temptation to use your hands to pull yourself up. After all, you are holding the bar with your hands. Do not do this. In fact, there is no pulling exercise, body weight or otherwise, where you should be generating strength with your hands. Your hands are static hooks. They are there to hold you to the bar. Focus on your elbows when you do the pull. Try to forget your hands and forearms exist…they are hooks holding you there, pull your body (chest first) upwards towards the bar and focus on driving your elbows down to the floor.  The lats are THE HARDEST muscle to form a mind muscle connection to, “pull with your elbows” is, I find, the best way to do this. Focus on the elbows moving back to engage those lats.

So now that we have gone over some common mistakes, lets do a quick list of how to do the pull up.

a) Completely control your motion with every pull up. Keep your upper body and legs stationary and pull yourself upward in a straight line. Your negative should be totally controlled and take between 2-4 seconds.

b) Keep your elbows pointed out to the sides and in line with your shoulders, then focus on driving them down and back on each rep

c) Focus on the pulling resistance using your elbows NOT your hands

Here is video of Arnie executing perfect pull ups…