The Best Circuit Workout to Help You Do More Pull-Ups

Of any calisthenics exercise, pull-ups are the most difficult to perform and see improvements without significant time and effort. Your pulling muscles (biceps, latissimus dorsi, rear deltoids, forearms) must pull nearly 100% of your body weight to lift your chin over a bar. Below is a helpful way to get your body used to your body weight to gain strength and increase the pulling muscles' volume to build more pulling endurance.

Your first pull-up is a strength exercise, while your 20^th pull-up is an endurance exercise. Try this:

Warm-up with the Pull-up Pyramid 1-5, stretch/jog between sets (20 seconds) + one-mile run:

This half-pyramid warm-up requires you to do 15 pull-ups in five sets of increasing reps:

• 1 pull-up, jog 20 seconds
• 2 pull-ups, jog 20 seconds
• 3 pull-ups, jog 20 seconds
• 4 pull-ups, jog 20 seconds
• 5 pull-ups, jog 20 seconds

Then jog a mile or bike for 10 minutes to continue the warm-up.

Note: If you cannot do pull-ups, you can still do this warm-up and workout below. Just replace pull-ups with some form of pulling exercise. Try band-assisted pull-ups or dumbbell rows as your warm-up.

This pulling circuit workout is one of my favorites. It challenges your current pulling volume and pushes you off any training plateaus regarding pull-ups. If you cannot do one pull-up as a max rep set, try one negative pull-up. This means getting your chin over the bar by stepping or jumping. Then slowly control your descent, fighting gravity for at least five seconds.

The following circuit has minimum rest between pulling exercises. Still, the five-minute cardio at the end of the pulling circuit allows some recovery before the next set. Depending on your fitness level, do 3-5 sets of the circuit below:

Repeat 3-5 times.

• Pull-ups max
• Pulldowns 10
• Rows 5/arm
• Biceps curl 10
• Jog or bike for five minutes

The workout section above is performed in the following manner:

Do as many pull-ups as possible (or negatives if zero). Then, if available, do pulldowns on a pulldown machine or cable machine. This is followed by dumbbell or machine rows of moderately heavy weight so you can get five reps without failing. You do not want to go too light. Keep the weight so you cannot do 10 reps of the rowing exercise. The following exercise is bicep curls done with dumbbells or a curl bar for 10 reps of moderate weight. Do not select a weight so light that you can get 10+ reps easily for all these weighted exercises.

After the pulling circuit, take a five-minute jog, bike ride or other cardio activity as an active rest between pulling sets. By the end of the workout, this will accumulate to 15-25 minutes of cardio activity. If you are in the heavy category with your body weight, you may need to add more cardio to help you burn more calories daily and watch the amount you eat. Being lighter will make pull-ups easier, but so will getting stronger.

The final section of the workout involves a cooldown run or bike ride for 10 minutes, followed by a good upper-body stretch.

This is one of many ways to increase the volume of your workouts to help you improve your strength and endurance. You will be pumped up after this workout, but the cardio will help you recover and allow for some cardio training (just in case you need that, too).

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