Just bought a chin up bar and discovered i can’t do a single one. I can just about hang there for a couple of seconds and that’s about it. My strength to weight ratio is clearly the inverse of what it should be! So now on a mission to learn how.

Any advice? Do you start at the top and try and resist gravity? Go down a bit and then try and pull yourself back up? Or dangle like a rotten apple for ages til some strength starts to appear? How often to i need to practise.

Any help, sarcastic comments or insults gladly received.

And its chin ups rather than pull ups as apparently they are a bit easier.

Your using biceps, trapezius & latissimus dorsi, to make the exercise “easier” use a narrow grip (palms facing you OR palms facing each other if your bar offers this grip), this places more emphasis on the biceps as well as utilising the traps & lats, see if you can knock out a few this way. If not, any “pulling” action will help strengthen, you may need to use a gym Lat Pull Down or Seated Row machine or replicate these resistance movements at home.

Jump up and lower yourself slowly. This is called a negative. Supplement that with using bands, hang a band from the bar and put a foot/feet in it. Do your chin ups. Decrease the strength of the band when you get to 10 or so. Loads of stuff on YouTube, calisthenics movement particularly good.

utilising the traps & lats, see if you can knock out a few this way

While enjoyable this is unlikely to help doing chin up / pull ups.

Make it more fun and go down to the park and play on the monkey bars for a few hours, It will come really quickly.

You can get a resistance band around the bar and loop it round your feet or knees to start with, that’ll help to start with.

Thanks for the help. The resistance band thing was a good idea. Ive just tried with my knee in a full set of 5 resistance bands and managed to get 5 chin ups, then 2, then 2. can’t feel my arms now ha ha.

Chin up, palms facing you should be relatively easy.

Doing negatives will get you there pretty quickly (and leave your arms burning). The principal is your muscles see as much load as doing the actual exercise, even if they can’t do the force. Bands also work, negatives of anything work better (in theory, unless you injure yourself).

Once you can do ~ 3×15 chin ups, then move onto a wider grip pull up with your hands over the bar (palms away from you). They’re much harder, but by that point you should be able to do enough of them in a set to see some benefit.

just hang from the bar
do negatives, start @ the top (use a chair or whatever to get there) and slowly lower yourself.

negatives will yield the fastest results.

if your bar is in a doorway always do one when passing or do a 10,20, or 30 second deadhang.
this is called “greasing the groove” and quite effective

The School of Calisthenics are very good for this sort of thing:

http://www.50pullups.com/

Just follow this plan

Negatives definitely the way to go and keep doing them in addition to full chin ups as you progress. Be patient and train often, but also give body a day or two off each week esp early on, as you’re putting a lot of force into your tendons that they’re not used to. Listen to your body. Also be realistic about how many you’ll be able to achieve in one go, if you’re on the heavier side 3 x 15 could take quite a while to achieve.

Brilliant advice thanks, I keep trying at the gym but with hands wide, can’t do one and I think I’m pretty fit. So hands narrow, start negative and or bands, result.

should be relatively easy

HAh! Your strength to weight and my strength to weight ratio are clearly not all that similar!

I’ve been wanting to get to pull up strength for a while now, but not really focussed on it, just been building strength in the gym. I was at a bouldering wall recently and used the warm up chin up bar and made a whole pull up! New for me, but I used to be 107kg (16.5 stone) ish and have way more leg strength than upper body strength. Down to 90kg now and a fair bit stronger, but still need to get stronger up top.

Try starting with negatives, jump up and pull yourself to the bar and then lower down slowly and repeat 3 sets of 5 reps building to 3 sets of 10 reps.

Then get some resistance bands and then again build up to 3×10 slowly over time reducing the thickness of the band so it offers less help.

Before you know it you will be able to do chin or pull ups! Then you can work on reps and more advanced pull ups (archer, commando etc.)