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| He can bench 785lbs wonder if he can do a pull up? |
Females struggle with pull up because the upper body muscles aren't as naturally developed without training as a male. Females tend to be more lower body dominant and guys tend to be more upper body dominant with no training. This doesn't mean females can't develop the strength to do them. They most certainly can, in fact many girls can do just as many pull ups as guys once properly trained.
Guys are naturally able to do pull ups as long as they are ultra thin. Big guys with muscles that are really strong struggle badly with them. When I was bone thin I could do 1 handed pulls no problem then, I got stronger and grew a few muscles. Now I'm lucky if I can do two pull ups. I wanted to figure out why as this annoyed me. the answer was rather plain to see and in front of my face the whole time.
Geek time we need to understand back anatomy:
I'll keep it in layman terms.When we are in the state of a a dead hang on a bar a bone in our backs called the scapula is stretched out. (Diagram below). Now typically when we think of pull ups we are thinking of working the big muscles in the back the latissimus doris . For this however I don't want you focusing on that muscle. I want you to focus on the Teres Major (Other diagram below it's the muscle highlighted in red)
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| Scapula |
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| Teres Major |
The teres major is mainly used to pull our arms down, it's the first back muscle to fire when we do a pull up from a dead hang. It is the main culprit usually on why we struggle with doing pull ups. This muscle tends to be very underdeveloped as it really isn't used for much other then pulling down stuff from over head a movement we rarely do.
You might be thinking to yourself of another exercise that surely activates the teres major that you've seen big guy lifting heavy weights can do yet can't do a pull up, that exercise is the cable pulldown. I would agree this exercise can work the teres major however most bodybuilders or people working out back will not let themselves fully lock out with this exercise because this will engaged there biceps in the movement. Our back fires like this during that movement teres major > biceps > latissimus (The main muscle we are trying to target when we work out back). Since this yields the best results for back development often many people bring the movement short to not fire the bicep and keep the back muscles fired the whole time. Leading to an under developed teres major in the process.
The good news is this can be all fixed. We can strengthen that lagging teres major muscle no problem. The bad news is you'll have to wait till I post my teres major development routine that I developed for next times post.
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| His arms aren't fully locked out at the top of the movement |
The good news is this can be all fixed. We can strengthen that lagging teres major muscle no problem. The bad news is you'll have to wait till I post my teres major development routine that I developed for next times post.
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