Pimp Your Pull-ups!
Together with the push-up, the pull up is the bread and butter of bodyweight exercises. It's a great way to work on upper body strength and grip strength, and to develop a keen sense of body positioning. Here's 5 objects and 8 methods to pimp your pull-ups, with everyday items you may otherwise not pay much attentions to. Watch the video below for all the variations, and then scroll down to read more a little more on each of them.
Pimp your pull ups!
Equipment
Pull-up bar and any of the other equipment below.
Sponge
Holding one dishwashing sponge in each hand, grab the pull up bar with an open grip and perform the pull-up. You can use either the underhand or overhand grip. The sponge adds thickness to the bar and reduces friction at the same time. The sponge adds very little difficult to the movement, but it will definitely take its toil as you do more reps.
You can use thicker sponges, but I would recommend moving on to gloves to add greater difficulty to the movement.
Glove
Wearing a pair of fleece glove, or other winter gloves, grab the pull-up bar and perform a pull-up. You can use any grip with the gloves. Like the sponge, the glove adds thickness to the bar and reduces friction. Definitely a step up from using sponges, you can feel the increased slipperiness almost immediately and need to grab on tightly to stay on the bar. Your forearm will be feeling the burn soon enough.
To add more difficulty to this, try wearing two layers of glove, or use thick oven mittens (just don't let your mum know!).
Backpack
As a substitute to the dip belt or weighted vest, the backpack allows you to add weights and overload the basic pull-up. A very flexible tool, adjust the weight accordingly with books or weight plates. But do be careful as there's only so much weight a small backpack can carry.
If you desire, purchase a dip belt to do pull-ups with. Not only can you load more weights with the dip belt, they also interfere less with shoulder movement.
Wrapped Towel
Wrap a bath towel around the pull-up bar. Hold on tight and do a pull-up. The towel add thickness and reduces friction to the bar. It is a much harder hold compared to both the sponge and the glove.
You can adjust the thickness of the bar by the number of layers you wrap the bar with. The thicker, the harder and vice versa.
One-Handed Single Towel
Throw a towel over the bar. Put one hand on the bar, and hold the towel with the other. The hand on the bar will be doing more work and hoisting a greater percent of the bodyweight. This movement is used as a progression for the one-armed pull-up.
By adjusting your hand position on the towel, you can increase or decrease the strain placed on the other arm(we shall now call it the bar-hand). The higher your hand on the towel, the more it can assist your bar-hand. The lower your hand is on the towel, the less it can assist the bar-hand and the more difficult this movement becomes.
Single Towel
Throw a towel over the bar. Grab both ends and perform a pull-up. This is a great grip developer and request that you hold on tightly to the towel.
You can progress by using two towels instead of one in the movement below. You can make the exercise harder by grabbing the towel at a lower position. The lower you grab and the longer the towel, the more stabilizer muscles are required, thus making it more difficult.
Double Towel
Double the towel, double the trouble. You will be grabbing onto twice the amount of towel in each hand, making this grip a lot harder then the previous 'single-towel' movement. Grab both ends of each towel in each hand and perform a pull-up.
Like with the single towel, grabbing at a lower position will make this exercise harder.
Uniform
Maybe it's due to the material, but I find this the toughest of the lot. If you have a old set of coveralls or military fatigue, you can give this a try. Throw an old set of uniform over the bar, grab tight and pull-up. Thicker doesn't always mean harder. With the uniform, you will be holding onto the least amount of material, and yet your fingers will be screaming for mercy.
As a disclaimer, all ranks tabs and tags have been removed from this uniform.
Put Them all Together!
There's no need to choose one over the other. You can combine the equipment for an interesting workout. Like wear gloves and do the double towel pull-ups. Or use the backpack and the towel at the same time. If there's other household items you can use to make the pull-up more difficult, do share it with me! Remember the best workout is the one you are not doing!
Lin Yimian, CSCS, SGX
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