I can do about 20 pullups. (2 arms). I can hang by one arm and pull my body about halfway up once. I want to be able to do one armed pullups. Should I continue doing regular pullups and increasing the number well past 20 or is that still not gonna add enough strength to only one arm. If not, what other exercises should I focus on to reach this goal. My goal is to be able to do 20 one armed pullups with each arm. (I have this goal, because pull ups appear to be a good indicator of overall upper body strength. It works alot of muscles)
Visit a gym and find a pullup contraption that let’s you work with a portion of your own weight. Something like this:
Admittedly, they are usually designed for people working on their 2 arm pullup and dip.
One armed pull-ups may change the muscles being worked because you’ll be pulling from a slightly different angle. Doing one armed pull ups will work directly toward this goal, while two armed pull-ups may not. That said, doing half a one armed pull-up may be a pretty ineffective way to build strength, so two armed pull-ups may be better.
Basically, I don’t know. Measure for Measure makes a good suggestion.
Say you don’t have money to join a gym?
If it was twice as hard to do a one-armed pull-up as it was to do a 2-armed one, in theory, if you could do 40 2-armed pull-ups comfortably, you would be able to do 20 1-armed ones. So, let’s say it’s 5 times as difficult, and aim to be able to do 100 2-armed pull-ups, and give it a whirl then. By that time, your strength will not be in doubt and it will just be down to technique.
A one-arm pullup (OAP) is a completely different exercise from a two-armed one. There is no correlation between the number of two-arm pullups and one-arm pullups one can do, other than if you can’t easily do a whole bunch of strict two-armers, you certainly won’t be able to do a single one-armer.
Yanking out huge numbers of regular pullups won’t make it. People who have succeeded in the OAP have done so through training specifically for it for a long time. See below:
http://beastskills.com/OneArmPull.htm
The current world record for OAPs is 23. Ten or so OAPs is a world-class feat. Good luck!
See the bit where I said it would then be down to getting the technique right? Apologies if you weren’t implying I was talking through my ass.
Ivan,
I was addressing the OP, not your reply.
Ignore me then.
Use a chair to support part of your weight with your legs when you do one arm pull-ups. You have to discipline yourself to support as little of your weight with your legs as you can. Decrease the % you support with your legs until it’s 0%.
Use a towel (or, if you’re super-fancy, get a handle you can hang from the bar) to lower the non-dominant hand a little bit. Then continue to do two-handed pullups - you’ll be putting extra emphasis on the higher hand.
Continue doing this, lowering your grip on the towel/handle as you progress. This way you don’t need to do an all-or-nothing transition.
I used to be able to do a few one handed pullups in a row when I was in college. I did one about a year or so ago (I’m 34 now).
I think I had several things going that helped:
(1) I was regularly doing pullups with extra weight in a backpack. I think once you get around 20 or so (unweighted) , it becomes more of an endurance thing and won’t necessarily help your one handed pullup efforts. I was also lifting pretty extensively for other muscle groups as well.
(2) My body is a little odd. I don’t weigh very much – at the time, I weighed about 138 – but I put on muscle pretty readily.
(3) I had been intentionally trying to shed extra pounds (I was aiming for a certain weight class on the wrestling team), so I probably reached my maximum strength to weight ratio. Losing 5 pounds may make a big difference for you.
I wasn’t training specifically for that. But going halfway like you are talking may help. Or maybe you can could climb on a chair and try to do negative one handed pullups (ie lowering yourself) as slowly as possible.
I can’t even do a single two-arm pullup.
I do weigh about 14 stone 10 pounds. Maybe that’s a factor.
Based on P90X, the ONLY exercise I’ve ever done, I can tell you that if you take an exercise and turn a part of your body a different way it’ll use an entirely different muscle group*. I’d imagine if you do 1 armed pull ups, you’re arm will twist a bit when you hang your weight from it and that’s going to use muscles that two armed pull ups don’t strengthen.
*As an example put your arms out and point your fingers/hands out and make small circles…okay, now put your palms out, like your washing a window on either side of you…feel that, right in your fore arm…you weren’t working that muscle before, not you can feel it burning.
I see. You’re saying that if I can bench press 200 pounds 32 times, then I can bench press 400 pounds 16 times, or 800 pounds 8 times, or 1,600 pounds 4 times…
See that word “If”, right at the very beginning and the words “in theory” a little further on? All I was doing was making the same point as Toxylon, that unless you can do a lot of 2-arm pull-ups with ease, you are going to find it difficult to do a OAP.
Although perhaps not as many as you might think. I’m pretty sure I’ve done a 1 handed pullup when I couldn’t have done more than ~20 strict two handed ones. 1 handed pullups require more in the way of raw strength and high strength to weight ratio than than they do endurance.
Here’s a video of a guy doing doing one-armed pull-ups, as well as other feats of strength. I’ve disabled the link since the guy isn’t wearing a shirt, and thus might be considered NSFW.
