A Beginner’s Pull-Up Progression Plan So You Can Nail Your Very First One | SELF

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In its simplest terms, the pull-up seems pretty basic: hang from a bar, then pull yourself up to it. It’s not complicated, but that sure doesn’t mean that it’s easy. In fact, this bodyweight, no-fancy-footwork-needed move is one of most difficult strength exercises to master, making it a common reach-for-it goal for many gymgoers out there.

Impressive yet intimidating, the pull-up is widely considered the holy grail of strength exercises, Kira Stokes, CPT, a personal trainer in New York and LA and the creator of the KSFIT app, tells SELF. “It’s a flex when you can do a pull-up, and especially if you can bang them out rep after rep.”

That’s because a pull-up is not something that just anyone can hop up onto a bar and do with ease—even someone who is otherwise relatively strong. The move takes genuine, focused work, along with a whole lot of strength. “To the naked eye, it’s an upper-body exercise, but it’s truly a full-body exercise,” Stokes explains.

“When your goal is to do a pull-up, you really have to dissect what a pull-up is from the ground up, then determine how you can properly strengthen the areas that are most involved to progress to it,” adds Stokes. So let’s get to dissecting everything you need for pull-up progression, shall we?

Pull-ups primarily work your lats (our largest back muscles), biceps, and forearms, Amy Potter, CPT, personal trainer in Hermosa Beach and strength coach at Ladies Who Lift, tells SELF. They also require significant core engagement and control, and a whole lot of shoulder mobility, says Stokes.

Stokes says to think of them as hanging hollow holds. Your arms are overhead (that’s where shoulder mobility comes in), your core has to be super strong to keep you torso stable, and your legs and glutes must fire so that they don’t flail as your body moves up and down.

During a pull-up, you’re using the strength in your lats, biceps, and forearms to literally lift the entirety of your bodyweight, Potter notes. That’s why if you haven’t been working on upper-body strength regularly, they’ll be a lot more challenging for you, she says.

Beyond giving you bragging rights in the gym, adding pull-ups to your workouts is great for building strength, which can benefit you in and out of the gym. “Having a strong posterior chain—the back side of the body—helps you maintain good posture, reduces the risk of injuries, and can translate into improved form and strength in other exercises, such as a deadlift, where having a strong back is also important,” Potter explains.

It’s also a great grip strength exercise, Stokes adds. That’s important, since research links it as a solid predictor of overall health and longevity. Chances are, if you’ve got a great grip, that means you’ve been strength training and are experiencing the health benefits that come with that—say, for your heart, lungs, bones, and more, all of which can help you in the long run.

We’re not going to sugarcoat it here: Pull-ups are hard AF. Depending on your starting point, it could take months (or even years) of focused work in the gym to do your first one.

“It’s good to have strength goals, but it’s really important to have realistic goals and to know that a pull-up isn’t one of those things that’s going to happen overnight,” Stokes says. “For most people, it’s probably not going to happen in six or even eight weeks. The timeline is very personal because it depends on your starting point in terms of strength,” she explains. It’ll also depend on non-training related factors, like sleep, recovery, stress, and nutrition, Potter adds.

That’s why one of the most important skills when chasing this—or any—fitness goal is patience, says Potter. “There is no hack, quick fix, or magic pill that will help you do your first one. It will take time, consistency, effort, and patience.” Your journey will include building strength and mobility in the muscles that are key during the exercise itself and working through pull-up progressions to get comfortable with the general movement so you can eventually graduate to the full thing.

“The best way to improve at any exercise is to train it consistently,” Potter says. “If your goal is to get better at pull-ups, you should be doing some variation of them weekly, along with other back, bicep, and forearm exercises and applying the principles of progressive overload.” Quick refresher: Progressive overload means gradually increasing the stress you put on your muscles as you get stronger and adapt so that you keep challenging them—say, by adding more weight or increasing reps.

Your pull-up workout plan should consist of the following major categories of work:

Potter recommends doing 20 sets of upper-body strength work each week, which roughly shakes out to three to four sets of six exercises. These 20 sets can be split up however it works for you: Maybe that’s two upper-body days, three full-body days, or one big pull day with a couple other upper-body sets thrown in during your other exercise days throughout the week.

The specific reps you do in each set will depend on the exercise, what your goals are, and what equipment you have available, but in general, she suggests a range of 3 to 4 sets of 3 to 15 reps. As you get stronger and start to use heavier weights, the number of reps you can eke out will decrease—that’s totally normal and expected. Then, as you get even stronger, they’ll creep back up. (After which, it’s time to up the weight again! And so the cycle of progressive overload continues.)

In addition to that straight strength work, Stokes says it’s important to mix in shoulder mobility drills, hollow holds (on the floor), and then, after a few weeks, some dead hangs. She recommends doing these at the beginning of your workout. Once you gain some strength, it may help to do your bigger moves in the beginning of the workout before you get tired, she adds. After all, you want to lift heavy enough that your muscles are pretty spent by the last rep, to make sure you’re building muscle and strength effectively.

Finally, you’ll start practicing actual pull-ups by first doing some dead hangs, then band-assisted chin-ups, negative chin-ups, then finally pull-ups. “It’s very hard to say when you’ll be ready for one, but it doesn’t hurt to try. You never know until you try,” says Stokes. “You could try it every session, as long as it’s not going to frustrate you.” Attempting a pull-up frequently can also give you a good gauge about where you are and how far you’ve come. Whether you try at the beginning or end of your workouts is up to you. You may not want to save it until the end when you’re tired, says Stokes, but it’s also important to be warmed up before just jumping onto the bar and trying to crank one out.

Do these exercises in the beginning of your strength workout to warm up your body, improve shoulder mobility, and work on the total-body engagement you need to nail a pull-up.

Moving your arms in this pattern helps improve rotation and mobility in the shoulder joints and the scapula (shoulder blades). Focus on keeping this movement very slow and intentional to make sure you’re getting the benefits.

This exercise is great for improving mobility in the rotator cuff, the small muscles inside the shoulder joint that are key for stabilization. Bonus: You’ll also get into your rear deltoids (in the back of your shoulders) and trapezius (upper back and neck muscles)—both of which are going to be important on your pull-up journey.

The goal with a hollow hold is to build core strength and stability. It works your entire core, including the rectus abdominis (the muscles that run vertically along your abdomen; what you picture when you think of “abs”), your transverse abdominis (the deepest core muscles), plus your lower back and obliques.

Do these exercises two to three times (a minimum of 20 sets) per week to build strength in your back and arms. Stokes recommends doing the harder exercises (compound moves, like rows) in the beginning of the workout, and saving the easier ones (isolation exercises, like bicep curls) for the end when you’re starting to get tired.

A row targets the latissimus dorsi (lats, the broadest of your back muscles), rear deltoids, rhomboids, and biceps, as well as your trapezius. Doing it with one arm at a time also adds in a core stability challenge. If you’d prefer, you can also do the exercise with a cable or resistance band, Stokes says.

This move primarily works your lats, rhomboids, and traps, plus your core, biceps, and deltoids. It’ll also start getting you used to the motion of pulling your bodyweight up. And if you do the move with a barbell, it will also help you train the same grip that you’ll use for a pull-up. During an inverted row, Stokes says to think about keeping your body in a strong plank position to avoid arching your back. To make the move easier, move your legs closer to your body. To make it harder, bring your legs farther out. “The more parallel to the floor you are, the harder the inverted row is,” she notes.

This move will hit your rear deltoids, or the backs of the shoulder joint. These muscles are important for stabilizing the shoulder during pulling motions—like a pull-up.

If you have access to a lat pull-down machine, you can do this exercise using that instead, says Stokes. Otherwise, a resistance band makes a great tool for working the back and shoulder muscles that you need to get super strong to be able to pull your body up to the bar.

The overhead pull works overhead shoulder mobility while also engaging your lats and core, Stokes says—making it a great move for pull-up prep.

Biceps play an important role during pull-ups, so it’s a great idea to target them with curls. The hammer curl, in particular, engages your forearms more than a standard biceps curl and also engages the brachialis in your upper arm (thanks to the grip position). To get the most out of the exercise, focus on gluing your elbows in place and only moving your forearm up and down.

After a few weeks of building up your strength, it’s time to start working on the pull-up movement—starting with the most modified version and eventually progressing up to the real deal. These moves are listed in the order in which you’ll do them. A few weeks into your pull-up plan, move your hollow hold to the bar—a.k.a., try your first dead hang!

Stick with hangs for a few weeks, and then try the next progression on the list to see if you’re ready. Then do that move for a couple weeks until you’re ready for the next, and the next, and so on. Instead of aiming for a specific number of reps, the goal here is to play around a bit and gauge where you’re at—so instead, focus on doing what you can and try scaling up to the next progression when you feel strong and ready to try. FYI, you should still be keeping up with your strength work, just adding these progressions on as an additional exercise so that you can start building the skill.

“Think of hanging as progressing your overhead shoulder mobility work,” says Stokes. It’s important to draw your shoulder blades down and together so that you can make sure your lats are engaged before you progress to a pulling movement. Once you feel comfortable completing your reps, you can try increasing the amount of time you hang during your next workout. After a few weeks of progressing, you can move to the next step.

There are two things about this move that make it easier than a full pull-up. First, you’ll be using chin-up grip (palms facing toward your body) instead of the overhand pull-up grip (palms facing out); this tends to be easier because your biceps assist more than they do in a pull-up, Potter explains. Second, the band helps make the motion easier by giving some assistance. This allows you to experience the sensation of doing a full pull-up, Stokes says, which can help you understand the motion (and build your confidence). “Make sure to take a moment to hang in that starting position and properly engage and then pull so that you’re not using the band as a springboard,” she notes.

The negative movement allows you to strengthen the lowering, or eccentric, portion of a pull-up, says Potter. “Eccentrics are a great way to build strength, and get your grip used to bearing your full weight.”

Like we mentioned, chin-ups are typically a bit easier than pull-ups, because the grip allows your biceps to assist more, Potter notes. “I highly recommend starting with trying to get your first chin-up, because you will likely be able to do that quicker than getting your first pull-up,” she says.

“Pulling all of your body weight is a big feat!” Stokes says. If at any point you get discouraged, remind yourself that this process takes a lot of time. “It’s not that you can’t do them, you can’t do them yet,” she clarifies. “That mindset is what’s going to give you the confidence to try and work up to that pull-up.” And it’s going to feel pretty damn good once you finally do.

Demoing the moves above are Caitlyn Seitz (GIF 1), a New York–based group fitness instructor and singer-songwriter; Amanda Ting, DPT, CSCS, (GIF 2), a personal trainer at Mark Fisher Fitness in NYC; Amanda Wheeler (GIF 3), host of the Covering Ground podcast; Jamie Song (GIF 4), NASM-certified personal trainer based in New York City; Landyn Pan (GIFs 5, and 10-14), an online fitness and nutrition coach who helps LGBTQ+ individuals feel confident and affirmed in their bodies; Tray Drew, MPH (GIFs 6 and 8), owner/operator of Body By Tray and an ISSA-certified personal trainer and corrective exercise specialist; Rosimer Suarez (GIF 7), a special education teacher from New York City; and Billy Anslow-O'Rourke (GIF 9), doctor of physical therapy and Queens-based group fitness instructor.

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