Ok, so you’ve been at the gym a few months now. You’re feeling pretty strong, you’re eating right and you’re working hard. But now you want to try something new. And you see these super buff guys and girls in the gym and on Instagram just knocking out pull ups like they’re nothing. It’s A) pretty impressive, and B) pretty annoying….why can’t I do them?? I feel your frustration!
If you do some research (like you know I love to do!) you’ll be hit with a plethora of different reasons why some people can (or cannot) do pull ups, why males and females are biologically different, that women are weaker, that some people are just “too heavy”, that we don’t need to do pull ups anyway…. this list of pull up articles is literally never ending. I know I’m adding to it with this one, but I’m writing it from a real, first hand perspective, and minus the bullshit.
Why can’t you do pull ups? The simple answer is…. you just don’t train to do them. No body walks into a gym and smashes out 20 pull ups without practising (unless you’re a 15 year old boy, maybe). It’s the same with anything: gymnastics, powerlifting, football, Olympic Lifting, reading, writing…nobody just rocks up and is just able to do these things. They take practice, training, and patience.
The main muscles worked in a pull up are the lats, traps, biceps, rhomboids, and core. Ask yourself: how often do you train those muscles? I mean, REALLY train them? Sure, we all do lat pull downs every now and again, and maybe the odd shoulder shrug, but that isn’t the same as a pull up.  Pull ups take full activation of the muscles of the back, and with our sedentary-sit-down-and-drive-everywhere lifestyles, this just doesn’t happen on a daily basis. Try including bent over rows, upright rows and flexed arm hangs into your training sessions (at least once a week) to really get those muscles activated and ready for performing pull ups.
And make sure you train your core to be strong – pull ups are a lot harder if you’re swinging around like a chimp from a tree. A lot of people find core training boring, but your core is your foundation, and you wouldn’t build a gorgeous mansion on a bed of jelly. I did some serious core training and upper body work to get me to be able to do pull ups, and I’m not gonna lie, it was hard. But one of my biggest motivations was that I kept reading in all these articles how women aren’t meant to do pull ups, that women are not strong enough. Anyone who knows me knows never to tell me I can’t do something, it’s just fuel for the fire! It took time, about 10 weeks, but I got there. I trained the right muscles, I was patient, I worked my core, and it happened. I feel stronger and more in control of my body. And my back looks awesome!
Nobody tells me what my body can and can’t do….except for me.