C) The 100 Pullups Routine (if your max set of pullups is 0-4)

For those of you who are too weak to be able to perform even one dead hang pullup correctly, or can do very few, you have some options.

1. If you workout at a gym, many of them have assisted pullup machines. There’s one at my gym called a “Gravitron”. Fancy name I know. What it does is take weight off of your own bodyweight so that when you perform the pullup you aren’t pulling up all of your own weight. Lets say that you weigh 180 pounds. You would select how much you want to strip from that 180 when performing your pullup. We’ll say 80 pounds. You then step up to the pullup bar, which has this padded platform you kneel on when performing your pullups.

What the platform does is that it pushes upwards against your bodyweight, at whatever weight you choose – so in our example 80 pounds. Since the pad you are kneeling on is generating a force equivalent to 80 pounds in the same direction you are moving your body (up), it means that your muscles only have to worry about the remaining 100 pounds. Unfortunately, It also takes core muscle activation out of the exercise because having your knees resting on the platform keeps your body stable.

If you have access to one of these, you will do the normal 100 pullups routine as described in part A but using this gizmo. What you’ll want to do is test a weight out that allows you to complete a max set of 10 pullups. So using our example again, if you weigh 180 and you put the machine on 80 pounds (thus taking that 80 off of your own weight) and at that weight you max out at 10 reps then that’s your working weight. If it’s too hard and you can only do 7 reps then play around with the numbers until you get it right. If you pick a weight where you are able to do 9 or 11 reps that’s fine too. Once you have that weight just follow the process described in section A.

2. If you don’t have access to an assisted pull up machine, then you will want to do a modified chinup routine using a combination of negatives and flexed arm hangs. You will get a stable chair or some sort of other stable platform and put it in front of the pullup bar. Step up onto the platform and hoist yourself into the top position of a chinup (palms facing toward you). Let yourself down as slowly as possible in a controlled manner.

When you get to the very bottom, step back onto the platform, take a few breaths and repeat. Follow the 100 pullups routine as outlined in part A, but instead of doing real pullups, do reps of these negatives. If you aren’t strong enough to do 5 reps of negatives, then follow the advice in part B – cut back on reps per set, increase the rest time between sets, etc.

When you start getting stronger, do a flexed arm hang every 5th set and then rest 3 minutes before continuing to the next set. To do a flexed arm hang you will follow almost the same procedure as described for negatives. The only difference is that once you hoist yourself up into the top position of the chinup, you’re going to stay there and hold on as long as you can instead of just lowering yourself slowly right away.

So your routine should look like this:

4 sets of negatives with 1 minute rest in between

1 set of flexed arm hang with a 3 minute rest after

4 rounds of this for a total of 20 sets