Pull-ups on the horizontal bar — basic multi-joint exercises

The hor­i­zon­tal bar is a com­pact and ver­sa­tile sim­u­la­tor that allows you to pump almost all the main mus­cles of the body, so you can find it almost every­where, both in the gym and on out­door sports grounds. Many ath­letes install it at home, because pull-ups are one of the most effec­tive and sim­ple ways to main­tain good phys­i­cal shape. This exer­cise has sev­er­al options for per­form­ing, due to which a thor­ough study of the mus­cle groups of the upper body is achieved, and the growth of mus­cle mass is stim­u­lat­ed. But when gain­ing mass, it is nec­es­sary to take into account a num­ber of sub­tleties, with­out which pull-ups will become less effec­tive for this pur­pose.

The role of nutrition, rest and lifestyle in muscle building

Pull-ups on the hor­i­zon­tal bar are among the basic mul­ti-joint exer­cis­es, there­fore they are effec­tive in train­ing for gain­ing mus­cle mass. But in addi­tion to fit­ness class­es, it is impor­tant to con­sid­er sev­er­al more con­di­tions that ensure mus­cle growth. The first thing you need to pay atten­tion to is the nutri­tion of the ath­lete. It is nec­es­sary to make sure that the food con­sumed is suf­fi­cient for the body: for this, the dai­ly calo­rie require­ment of a per­son is cal­cu­lat­ed using the coef­fi­cient for the sur­plus of ener­gy demand. At first, you may need to reg­u­lar­ly count the calo­rie con­tent of food eat­en, but in the future it will become a habit, and the required amount of food will be felt intu­itive­ly. It is impor­tant to remem­ber that a calo­rie sur­plus with­out active train­ing will not lead to a set of mus­cle mass, but fat, so nutri­tion must be accom­pa­nied by intense sports.

Anoth­er con­di­tion is a bal­anced diet: if the menu con­stant­ly con­tains junk food, a lot of sug­ar and wheat flour, then you can not expect a quick result. Mus­cle growth requires a build­ing mate­r­i­al, which is pro­tein. You can get it from meat, fish, cot­tage cheese or eggs. To pro­vide the body with ener­gy, car­bo­hy­drates are required, the most suit­able prod­ucts for their pro­duc­tion are cere­als, and it is rec­om­mend­ed to choose those that have under­gone min­i­mal mechan­i­cal pro­cess­ing. Fats are also required to main­tain bal­ance and pro­vide cells with nutri­tion, but the choice here should be made in the direc­tion of healthy fats obtained from veg­etable oils, nuts, avo­ca­dos.

In addi­tion to diet, a per­son­’s lifestyle must be con­sid­ered, as activ­i­ty indi­ca­tors and time allot­ted for rest also play a role in mass gain. Sleep time is con­sid­ered an indi­vid­ual indi­ca­tor, some­one gets enough sleep in 6 hours, oth­ers need 9; the aver­age is con­sid­ered 7 — 8 hours a day. If pos­si­ble, it is impor­tant to ensure its con­tin­u­ous flow so that the body has time to go through all the main phas­es of sleep. The high­est qual­i­ty rest is con­sid­ered in com­plete dark­ness, with­out addi­tion­al light sources; irri­tat­ing fac­tors include even the red lights of devices con­nect­ed to the net­work.

It is rec­om­mend­ed to start the morn­ing with an active charge, which will wake up the body and pro­vide a cheer­ful mood for the whole day. You should not lim­it your activ­i­ty to only strength train­ing, it is rec­om­mend­ed to move as much as pos­si­ble through­out the day. To do this, you can take walks, reduce the use of trans­port, if pos­si­ble, aban­don the ele­va­tor.

The benefits of exercise and safety measures

Any exer­cise has its pos­i­tive aspects, and pull-ups are no excep­tion. The advan­tages are:

• Work with your own body weight. The human body is genet­i­cal­ly adapt­ed to work with its own weight, there­fore, if an ath­lete is able to per­form var­i­ous exer­cis­es on the hor­i­zon­tal bar, this indi­cates an excel­lent con­di­tion of his mus­cles. If the work on the cross­bar is giv­en with great dif­fi­cul­ty, then you should think about the state of your body: most like­ly there is severe mus­cle weak­ness or exces­sive weight.
• In hang­ing on the cross­bar, the spinal col­umn does not expe­ri­ence com­pres­sion, but, on the con­trary, is stretched. This prop­er­ty is an excel­lent pre­ven­tion of var­i­ous clamps. Those ath­letes who work on fit­ness pro­grams with large weights in the ver­ti­cal plane are rec­om­mend­ed to arrange unload­ing for the spine: hang for at least 60 sec­onds on the cross­bar, try­ing to relax the mus­cles.
• Active pull-ups devel­op endurance indi­ca­tors of the body, make the body stronger and stronger. Accel­er­at­ed blood cir­cu­la­tion dur­ing fit­ness train­ing acts as a pre­ven­tion of con­ges­tion in the veins and blood ves­sels.

Despite the sim­ple tech­nique of the exer­cise, it is impor­tant to fol­low some pre­cau­tions to avoid injury:

1. Before start­ing pull-ups, you must per­form a warm-up, warm­ing up the mus­cles and lig­a­ments. This will help pre­vent sprains and torn lig­a­ments that require a long recov­ery.
2. In train­ing, you should work very care­ful­ly with addi­tion­al weights, for exam­ple, for a start, it is enough to add weight of 2–3 kg, and train with it for 1–2 weeks. Once the exer­cise has become easy to per­form, it is nec­es­sary to increase the num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions and sets, and not the weight of the weight.
3. A com­mon cause of injury is a weak grip. For addi­tion­al strength­en­ing of the hands and wrist, it is rec­om­mend­ed to prac­tice hang­ing, work­ing with a carpal expander and exer­cis­es with dumb­bells as often as pos­si­ble.
4. If the hor­i­zon­tal bar is too slip­pery, it makes sense to use mag­ne­sia or spe­cial gloves.

It can be dif­fi­cult for begin­ners to mas­ter pull-ups right away, in this case, rub­ber bands will come to the res­cue, which will remove some of the load.

Fitness program for pull-ups

There are a large num­ber of pull-up options: expe­ri­enced ath­letes can use dif­fer­ent ones, while begin­ners are advised to mas­ter the clas­sic look, per­formed with a direct grip with a medi­um palm set­ting. After mas­ter­ing the exer­cise, you can pro­ceed to the study of oth­er tech­niques; this will allow you to alter­nate styles of pull-ups, achiev­ing a detailed study of dif­fer­ent mus­cle groups. In addi­tion, they can be spread over dif­fer­ent fit­ness days, mak­ing your work­outs more var­ied. For exam­ple,

• day 1 per­form pull-ups with a nar­row set­ting of hands and a direct grip 3 sets of the max­i­mum num­ber of times;
• day 2 do pull-ups with a wide grip on the head 3 sets of the max­i­mum num­ber of times;
• day 3 per­form the exer­cise in the clas­si­cal form also in 3 sets.

To gain mus­cle mass between work­outs, you need to take one day off; dur­ing the rest peri­od, recov­ery and growth of mus­cle mass occurs. As you adapt, you need to resort to weights: with­out it, the peri­od of mus­cle growth will be too short. At the begin­ning of work with weights, the num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions in the set is reduced to 6–8 times. All move­ments should be per­formed smooth­ly and with­out jerks. Weight­ing is attached to the belt in the cen­ter.

It is impor­tant to remem­ber that only the mus­cles of the body work dur­ing pull-ups, the legs remain unused, there­fore, for uni­form mus­cle growth, it is nec­es­sary to include exer­cis­es for this mus­cle group in the pro­gram.