More Pulling

There was a time when I thought it was important to include twice as much pulling as pushing in one’s strength and conditioning program. Like many rules, it was great in concept, but not so much in practice. I’m still sure to include more reps of pulling than pushing, pretty much no matter what. Go ahead and count your reps. 

The reason pulling gets no love is because all the glory goes to the pull up. A beautiful, impressive movement. It requires tremendous full body strength and control. It’s out of reach for a lot of people. It takes so much time and dedication, time in the gym could be spent doing other, more effective things. Like horizontal pulling.

The problem with horizontal pulling, is that it’s vertical counterpart, the pull up, gets all the attention. In order to hoist one’s chin over a bar though, you first need to dedicate time, effort and energy into learning how to pull better, horizontally. 

Once you master the mechanics, you need to build strength. You should at least be able to do a flat, or shoulders under the rings, inverted row. To get there, row heavy dumbbells, use pauses and tempo and build volume over time and before you know it, you’ll have a strong, muscular upper back. Not until then should you worry about nailing that pull up. Respect the movement and get strong first.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain