Girl talk

The dreaded pull up!

For us ladies this is like climbing Mount Everest!
Typically the female body type is not blessed with the upper body strength that our male counterparts are endowed with....and typically we are blessed with the heavy hips. This again, makes lifting our own body weight a challenge, so whats a girl to do?

First off, know the muscle groups that actually work the pull up...

For me, my weakness was engaging the whole back, I found my arms were strong enough but my back worked as independent muscles, quivering in and out! I was good for about 1 or 1 and a half pull ups. 

Ladies we have to strengthen our backs in my opinion. Watch how you do your push ups as well. The upper back should be fully engaged from the shoulders, scapula, rhomboid area, etc. and down thru your lats. Full back engagement also translates , or it should, into an engaged core. So bottom line, the whole upper body group of muscles are locked together (like Lego pieces) to lift as one unit. The lower body is basically dead weight.

So how do I strengthen my back?

 Tonnes of exercises  out there to choose from but I found this particular dumbbell set, for my weak area, was very focused in strengthening my back for the purpose of pull ups. Use a weight size that challenges you, these tiny weights in the picture wont cut it. (no offence random girl in diagram!).

There are plenty of other weight training exercises for the back and plenty on the Internet to introduce you to them. I just found this one helped me a lot.

This Saturday, I'm going to bring in my pull up assist cable for fun...if you would like to try it let me know!

Happy reps and see you on the mats!