In my previous video, I mentioned that training negatives for your first one-arm pull-up is a
terrible idea, and unsurprisingly a lot of people can't wait to tell me how wrong I was in the
comments section. Most of the time YouTubers treat YouTube as a crowd-pleasing business, so
even when they see something wrong, they would be diplomatic about it and try not to rock the boat,
but, hey, guess what, I am here to shake things up in order to make the world a better place. First,
the risk of injury is too high. People who advocate negatives often cite that your muscles
are stronger during the eccentric movement than during the concentric movement. First of all,
this is not even true for all cases. If this were true, when I learned the concentric part
of the slow muscle-up, the eccentric part of the slow muscle-up should have been automatic,
but in fact it wasn't. It took me a few additional days to learn the eccentric part of the slow
muscle-up in order to complete the rep. But since we are talking about the one-arm pull-up,
I can agree that this statement should be true. The problem is that you have zero idea how much
stronger you are in the negative. There are websites that claim a dubious 1.75 times stronger
in the eccentric, and there are people in the comment section claiming an even more dubious
2 times stronger in the eccentric. However, I guarantee you that if I am in the position of
the top of the one-arm pull-up, and then my wife jumps onto my back to make the load 1.77 times,
there will be zero chance I can control it on the way down, and with 1.77 body weight free-falling,
we are heading for an irreversible shoulder injury. I have browsed through research papers
and none of them gives a concrete number of how much stronger we are in the negatives,
and I think it's precisely because it varies from person to person. It's also absolutely not worth
the risk to find out about it. Let's say you can't do the one-arm pull-up yet because you are only
capable of pulling 80 percent body weight. You think you can start training negatives with 100
percent body weight, but in reality, your body is only 10 percent stronger in negatives. You attempt
the negative and realize you can't control it. Then what do you do? I am going to demonstrate
with 2 arms here because I don't want to injure myself. Option 1, free-fall onto your shoulders
and pray that your shoulders can take the force without getting injured. Option 2, let go of your
arms from the bar and pray that when your arms go abruptly from max tension to zero tension,
nothing will get injured. That's it. There is no option 3. Whereas, if you train with a resistance
band and choose a band that's too light for you to go up, nothing bad will be going to happen. Just
switch to a heavier resistance band and continue training. Second, you think you are learning the
movement, but you aren't. There is a 99.9% chance that your starting position of the negative on
top of the bar is going to be different from the position when you actually do the one-arm pull-up
to come up to the bar. Your head position will be different. Your shoulder position is going
to be different. Your elbow position is going to be different, too. You will have zero idea what
optimal placement is for your head, shoulders, and elbows for your body type when you perform
the one-arm pull-up. Mimicking some YouTube experts' starting position on the top of the bar
isn't going to work for your body type, either. When we talk about max effort performance, all
the subtle positioning matters. Of course, if you are way stronger, the positioning doesn't matter.
It's just like I can do regular pull-ups no matter where I position my head, shoulders, and elbows,
but for beginners who are working on their first pull-up, guess what, all the subtle optimal
positioning matters. Furthermore, if you can't even get the starting position right, of course,
you aren't going to get the body path right, either. So, no, you aren't learning the movement
with negatives. Here are my recommendations of the right approaches to train negatives. First, only
train negatives with the same load as your current concentric load. In this situation, there is no
guessing. You are guaranteed to be able to perform the negative unless you are working on something
like the slow muscle-up. When you go up with a resistance band that allows you to go up, lower
yourself down with control instead of letting go and jumping off. This avoids your muscles from
going abruptly from max tension to zero tension and thus prevents related injuries. Additionally,
you can still gain the claimed abstract benefits that negatives supposedly provide, like,
you know, better muscle connection, improving muscle tissues, better neurological learning, stuff
like that, which I am unable to prove or disprove whether it's valid or not. Additionally, it is
also okay to try negatives to get a rough idea of the movement for exercises that have zero risk of
injury, for example, the press handstand negative. If you lose control and your feet hit the ground,
nothing bad will happen. Another example is the front lever negative. If you are attempting the
front lever, your shoulders should be in a state where you are able to handle a free-falling body
weight with both shoulders in case you lose control. In conclusion, I will take a rep that
is 90% body weight going up and then 90% body weight coming down over a rep that is 100% body
weight coming down every single day. I can also imagine someone commenting: "With a resistance
band, the positions of the head, shoulders, and elbows will be also different compared to those
in the real one-arm pull-up." Yes, I agree, but to me, it's pretty obvious that the positioning of the
band assisted one-arm pull-up is closer to that of the real one-arm pull-up. If that's still not
obvious to you, at least you should agree that the band assisted one-arm pull-up moves in the
same direction as the real one-arm pull-up and the negative moves in a complete opposite direction.
Therefore, obviously for the sake of learning the movement, the band assisted one-arm pull-up
is far superior to negatives. Alright, guys, that's it for the video and I hope you are
convinced that training body weight negatives for your first one-arm pull-up is a terrible
idea. If you are still not convinced, hey, best of luck to your shoulders. Make sure to like,
subscribe, and check out my website geekclimber.com. See you in the next video.