how to build lean muscles, how to gain muscles fast, pull-ups
Just recently I made the decision to go “old School” again with my workouts. I have all the fancy machines that do everything but lift the weights for you and I have found them effective. Unfortunately my muscle gains were starting to hit the dreaded plateau so I’ve decided to change it up a bit and go back to good old fashioned bodyweight exercises. If you want to learn how to build lean muscles, then these types of workouts are for you.
One piece of equipment that I have never really worked with was the pull-up bar. I have done pull-ups before but most of those were when I was younger and spending my free time at my school play area. I have now brought these back into my workouts and I have to say that they are really helping me get out of the plateau rut. Let’s discuss in more detail, what a pull-up is and which muscles it targets.
The Pull-Up Revealed
So obviously to perform this type of exercise, you are going to need a raised bar of some type. You can buy pull-up bar sets that hook into a doorframe or you can make your own. The only real requirement though is that you have some sort of bar that it is suspended high enough that you can hang from it with legs dangling and while doing so will hold your body weight.
So what is a pull-up? It is an upper body exercise that involves compounding pulling motions. The great thing about this exercise is that it trains several different muscles all at once. We’ll get into what those muscles are later, but first let’s describe what a typical basic pull-up would look like. To start off you would grip the bar with wrists facing away from you and arms shoulder width apart. Now using only the muscles in your upper body, you raise yourself upwards towards the bar until your chin is at the same level as the bar. To complete this move, simply drop back down slowly using your muscles to ease the body back down to a hanging position. It is very important at this stage to not drop down but to ease down with your muscles. Simply do as many reps as you can.
Most people have heard of chin-ups. Chin-ups are practically the same exercise as pull-ups only instead of having your wrists facing away from you, they face towards you. The great thing about pull-ups is that there are so many variations that you can use. Let’s talk about some of those variations.
Variations
The most obvious way to change this exercise a bit is with arm spacing. You can space your arms (i.e. wrists) quite wide (also known as wide grip pull-ups) or have your wrists quite close (e.g. 3-4” apart). You can also play with any variation of spacing in between. Now you can also mix in chin-ups as well which as we already talked about was merely changing the orientation of your wrists. Another variation is to have one wrist facing you and the other facing away for you. Perform a few pull-ups and then change to the opposite wrist orientations and then keep going back and forth. These really work.
Muscles
Another one of the benefits with these exercises is that they work numerous muscles all at once. They work the majority of the shoulder muscles as well as the upper back muscles. You will also find that under certain variations, you will be using the muscles that flex your elbows; the most obvious of these is the biceps. Finally, throughout the full range of the movement you are working your core muscles very heavily. So think of pull-up as the exercise that works it all.
If you haven’t figured out how to build lean muscles, then my suggestion to you is to try utilizing pull-up routines. There are a lot of routines out there that show you how to gain muscles fast. What you will find is that pull-ups are a great compliment to these or even in some cases a replacement exercise as well. Any way you look at it, pull-ups will work your body hard and show you the results in very little time. Have fun with them.
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