Pull-up
Hang from a bar with straight arms and pull your chin above it. The clearest test of upper-body pulling strength.
The movement
Wide overhand hang
01 Wide overhand hang
Grip wider than your shoulders with the knuckles over the top of the bar.
02 Elbows flare wide
Pull with the elbows travelling out to the sides, not in toward the ribs.
03 Chin clears the bar
Finish with the chin just over the bar and the elbows still out wide.
How to do it
Setup
- Grip the bar with your palms facing away, slightly wider than your shoulders, thumbs wrapped around.
- Hang with straight arms and your shoulders pulled slightly down rather than loose.
- Cross your ankles or point your toes to stop your legs swinging.
Execution
- Start the pull by driving your elbows down toward your hips.
- Keep going until your chin clears the bar and your chest is open.
- Lower under full control until your arms are straight again before the next rep.
BreathingExhale as you pull, inhale as you lower.
Form cues
- Pull your chest toward the bar rather than your chin over it.
- Drive your elbows down to your hips; your hands only hold on.
Common mistakes
- Swinging and kicking to get through the hardest part of the pull.
- Half reps that never return to straight arms at the bottom.
- Poking the chin forward to fake the last inch.
Worth knowing
- Check the bar's mounting before every session, and step down rather than dropping from the top.
General guidance, not medical advice. See how Setkit works.
Notes
The pull-up is the exercise the rest of this library looks up to. It measures your pulling strength against your own bodyweight through a full range, and there is nowhere to hide in it. The lats do most of the work, with the upper back, biceps, grip and trunk all involved.
The difficulty is honest. There is no lighter version of gravity, so the route to a first strict rep runs through real progressions rather than through swinging. Band assistance, slow negatives and the chin-up grip all build strength that carries over to the real thing. Swinging mostly builds better swinging.
Once you can do reps, hold the standard that makes them worth doing. Start from a full hang, get the chin clearly over, and lower under control. Five strict pull-ups build more than twelve bouncy ones, and they stay possible for longer as you get older.