Yaaa!
What's up, guys?
Are you tired of watching one-arm pull-up tutorial videos that tell you to do this exercise
and do that exercise, and eventually you will get it?
In this video, I will share the techniques and insights I learned throughout my one-arm
pull-up journey that no one has talked about.
Last year, I achieved an extra 77% of body weight pull-up by pulling up my wife.
At that time, I told myself I absolutely had to achieve at least one iconic elite calisthenics
move before my physical prime was over.
There are two very obvious options, the front lever and the one-arm pull-up.
For some reason, Overcoming Gravity ranks the front lever one level easier than the
one-arm pull-up, but to me achieving a perfect-form front lever feels way less possible than the
one-arm pull-up, so I decided to focus on the one-arm pull-up.
As usual, I started by watching as many one-arm pull-up tutorial videos on YouTube as possible,
and to be honest, all of them are terrible.
There are zero technique breakdowns and all they say is do this exercise and do that exercise.
I knew I was on my own and I just had to try it out and learn it all by myself.
I started out by measuring roughly how much force was still missing in order to do the
one-arm pull-up.
I was only able to pull myself up halfway with the lightest resistance band, and the
max number shown on the crane scale during where I was stuck is around 120 lbs.
I tried again with a slightly heavier resistance band, and I was able to get past where I was
stuck when the crane scale shows 105 lbs.
Given that my weight is 135 lbs,
that means I am missing at least 15 lbs of force, and at most 30 lbs of force, which
I would have to train for or learn better technique to generate.
I started training with the resistance band, which is the most logical approach because
it mimics the movement of the actual one-arm pull-up.
I was able to progress to using the lightest resistance band fairly quickly, but then I
got stuck.
Seeing all the YouTube comments asking where my one-arm pull-up was, I decided to try approaches
that I knew were dangerous.
Maybe I could jerk myself up explosively halfway like this guy.
Maybe I could kip all the way up like this guy.
Maybe I should raise my other arm like this pro climber.
As long as my chin is on top of the bar for one millisecond, it counts, right?
I started to train like this session after session.
The best attempt I got out of all of these is this attempt, which I actually showed in
my 2020 year end review video.
My chin was just a few inches short over the bar.
In hindsight, this was actually bad because it gave me hope and pushed me to train harder
this way.
As you all can predict, eventually I injured my shoulders.
I couldn't train for weeks because of it.
In the meantime, I came across a Reddit post where a guy was celebrating his first one-arm
chin-up, but people tore him apart and claimed it doesn't count because it's unclear
if he started with a dead hang.
I looked back at my best attempt, and realized even if my chin somehow made it over the bar
for 1 millisecond, I would get the same treatment as this guy anyways.
From that point on, I made conscious efforts to pause at the very bottom for all my attempts.
Once I got back from my injury, I decided to drop all my ego and stop attempting one-
arm pull-ups without the resistance band.
I decided to solely work with the resistance band, and make sure every single movement
was slow and controlled.
I trained and trained and trained.
The progress was extremely slow. I trained for more than 150 days and progressed from
only being able to go up while grabbing the lightest band at slightly above the head height
all the way to being able to go up while grabbing the lightest band at the eye height.
The main muscle preventing me from going up further was the serratus anterior.
It got fatigued so quickly and it seemed so hard to strengthen it.
On day 300, somehow, someway I discovered the most important technique of doing the
one-arm pull-up.
You want to pull yourself up and back during the first half of the movement instead of
just pulling yourself up.
This might seem counterintuitive because the body is taking a longer detour to get up,
but this allows you to engage the big lat muscles instead of relying on small weak muscles
like the serratus anterior.
In this position, your chest is fully opened and extended, and your lats are maximally
contracted, so much more power can be generated in this position.
Once you complete the first half of the movement, which means the lats finish their job and
the biceps will take over to finish the second half of the movement.
With this technique in mind, I was able to successfully do the one-arm pull-up while
grabbing the lightest band at the neck height, which is a significant improvement and further
proof of how important it is to work smart and not just work hard.
I continued to train, train, and train.
Soon, I was able to successfully do the one-arm pull-up while grabbing the lightest band at
the very lowest height.
I thought that was it and doing it without the band would be automatic because I felt
I got very minimal help from the resistance band while going up.
Unfortunately, I was wrong.
My body couldn't help itself from spinning without the resistance band.
I couldn't believe how much the resistance band helped prevent the body from spinning.
I was so frustrated.
Did I discover a technique that actually only worked with the resistance band, but didn't
work for the actual one-arm pull-up?
I couldn't believe it.
I started looking around on YouTube again.
I dug so hard that I even started watching non-English tutorials, and the exercises that
closely resemble the movement of the one-arm pull-up but don't involve the resistance bands
are these moves.
I have no problem doing all of them except for the actual one-arm pull-up.
The problem is these moves close the chest; therefore, all lat engagement is lost and
that means we are back to relying on the serratus anterior again.
Does my serratus anterior have to be made of steel like this guy in order to do the
one-arm pull-up?
I decided to sit down and think hard.
My physical ability isn't gifted, but I know my brain is somewhat gifted.
I know I can figure this out, and I did.
Prior to day 300, I was aiming for the center of mass to go straight up and straight down.
On day 300, I discovered that the center of mass taking a longer c-shape detour was worth
it for the sake of lat engagement.
The reason why I was spinning out is that my elbows were flaring out, which caused the
direction of the arm force to be different from the direction of the tangent of the c-shape
detour.
This is okay with the resistance band because although the upward force the resistance band
provides is minimal, it still generates enough opposite force so the combined force still
matches the tangent of the c-shape detour.
Shifting the center of mass by closing the chest ends up with a slightly different path
whose tangent matches the direction of the arm force, so no spinning will happen, but
the problem is that it disengages the lats.
It is better to bring your elbows as close to the middle as possible, so you can maintain
lat engagement while still matching the tangent of the c-shape detour.
Also beware of caving your elbows in.
This will cause your body to spin in, but our shoulders are not designed to rotate in
that direction, so don't do it unless you want to injure yourself.
With this technique in mind, and 1000 plus reps later, on day 390, this happened.
Yesss!
I did it!
As always, I know some of you might say.
"I am not sure if your chin is really over the bar, dude."
Fortunately, I had another camera set up in another angle, so watch this, dude!
I fully believe that had I known what I knew on day 1, I would've gotten this in less
than 100 days.
Seeing how many people are willing to spend money on the workout programs from the YouTube
experts, and seeing how many people are frustrated by the one-arm pull-up, I fully believe I
can charge and make some money for all this information, but hey, these are all now yours
for free.
You might wonder why I didn't mention the commonly repeated archer pull-up.
It's because the movement of the archer pull-up is completely different from the one-arm
pull-up, so working on the archer pull-up won't teach you the movement of the one-arm
pull-up.
If you are going to argue with me that doing archer pull-ups will make you stronger and
be more ready for the one-arm pull-up, yes, I don't disagree, but if you are just trying
to gain strength and get ready for the one-arm pull-up, the weighted pull-up is way better
than the archer pull-up for this purpose.
Another thing I will have to disagree with the YouTube experts is the importance of training
negatives.
I am sorry. You learn how to run by walking first, not running backwards.
In rock climbing, we never climb backwards in order to figure out a move that we can't
climb yet.
I know this might sound radical to calisthenics people, so I will make another separate video
in the near future to explain in detail why training negatives is a terrible idea.
In terms of the training schedule, I train the one-arm pull-up twice a week.
Anything more is insufficient recovery for the body unless you are a teenager.
I always go for max effort for 1~2 times to see where I am at, follow up with one roughly
85% max effort rep for as many sets as I can until failure, and stop right there.
It would be meaningless to continue to train with lower intensity because we are looking
for strength gains and not hypertrophy nor endurance gains.
Thanks for watching.
Make sure to like, subscribe and check out my website geekclimber.com.
See you in the next video.