5 Year Pull-Up Progression

Chapters:
0:00 - 2018
0:18 - 2019
0:30 - 2020
3:02 - 2021
3:12 - 2022
4:46 - 2023
My calisthenics journey to improve my bodyweight pull ups started in early 2018 and the earliest video of me I have going to failure on pull ups is from December 22nd 2018 and I am doing L sit pull ups and I was able to get 15 reps. I would continue to work on my pull up endurance with high rep sets as well as pull up strength with weight pull ups and I was eventually able to achieve over twice as many reps as in this first set after 5 years of training with slow and steady incremental progress.
I spent the majority of my training time working on strength as my main goal was to improve my one arm pull up, so there were longer periods in between bodyweight rep PR attempts.
At first and actually for a long time my form and range of motion was quite poor, but eventually my range of motion improved significantly at the end of those 5 years.
Nonetheless, It's important to keep in mind that progress takes a long time. Some people progress faster and some people progress slower but ultimately progress takes time and you should be proud of yourself and cherish the small micro progressions week to week. Maybe you didn't achieve any more reps on a personal record attempt, but maybe your form was more strict than last time and maybe your range of motions was better. There are many little victories that you can have along the way to your goals, so it's important to identify them and celebrate them. Taking videos of your sets will accelerate your progress when you analyze them. You can better reflect on what you did well and what needs work and implement plans to improve your deficiencies. You can easily prop your phone up against things to record yourself or invest in a cheap tripod.
Three factors that helped me progress were consistency, varying my rep ranges and intensities, and my focus on recovery.
In regards to consistency, what I mean is writing out a plan and sticking to it. I had to go through a lot of trial and error to figure out what my personal optimal training volume and frequency was. writing out training plans you are then able to look back and adjust the plan after you completed it to optimize it better for you, or during the plan if you feel it is too light or too heavy, modify it in real time. Even once you are able to put a plan into action that is best for you based on your past experiences you still need to adjust intensity levels based on how you are feeling that day and week based on your recovery and outside training workload. We are not robots just because last time a certain training plan worked well does not mean it will work exactly well the same again. Ultimately, consistency is the key for developing any skill whether it is calisthenics, learning a new language, an instrument, or studying for school.
And what I mean by varying up the rep range and intensity is dividing your workouts into endurance, hypertrophy, or strength opposed to training each type in every workout. Buy training these different energy systems you can make gains in each one more effectively and each category will help improve your pull ups, however, if you are focusing more on higher rep sets, like I am here, then you will want to have more endurance and hypertrophy training sessions opposed to strength, but still including strength is important. When you train endurance you are training at higher reps sets with rep ranges greater than 20 reps per set, which means you might have to reduce your weight that you are pulling up by using resistance bands. By training hypertrophy or building you pull up muscles you are doing rep ranges of about 10-20. To train strength you are training in high intensities with rep ranges about 5 or less. By training each category of rep ranges you will improve your progress.
Lastly, recovery. Recovery incorporates a large variety of factors such as your nutrition, like are you eating properly to fuel your workouts and then recovery after by eating nutrient dense foods with complex carbohydrates or are eating ultra processed foods and sugary beverages. recovery also includes sleep. Getting enough sleep at 8-10 hours per night, so that your body heals and repairs itself and energizes you so you are better prepared for your next workout. Essentially recovery includes everything you do when you are not training, in other words this is your lifestyle. All the decisions you make outside of your training session will either help you progress faster or make no difference on your progression or slow your rate of progression. Therefore the better your lifestyle the faster you will achieve your goals.
Here 5 years later on May 27th 2023 I was able to get 32 pull ups on both personal record attempts.
Thank you for watching! Please like and subscribe for more!
Music: www.epidemicsound.com/music/f...
#pullups #calisthenics #bodytransformation #fitnesstransformation #progress

[@Alles.Official]

One of the only journeys i could see so far, that actually highlighted the weight difference at the beginning and the end of calculus. Very important, as this is a big measuring factor and its great motivation that it took about a year per kg, while certain programs want to make belief that it's easy to put on 5kg of muscle mass in like 6 months, which is simply unrealistic.
Great video.

[@claytonpuranen]

Thank you, I really appreciate this insightful comment. It's interesting, while the muscle I built training pull-ups is functional and helps me do more pull-ups, it is also added weight which makes doing pull-ups harder, but the training overcomes the added weight with time and consistency.

[@fpalma1983]

That's pretty awesome, something that work for me is use different types like archer and commands pull ups!

[@claytonpuranen]

Thank you!! True and it feels nice to switch it up, keeps training fresh. I typically use different grip positions when I am training with lighter weights and higher reps to help prevent over-use injuries.