I resisted the Fighter Pull-up Plan for years. I convinced myself that I was different. My body didn’t need – or to be honest, couldn’t handle – the volume of the program. Sure, it had worked for friends of mine, but I knew I would be an exception. And then I tried it.
And I was wrong. About everything.
The Fighter Pull-up Plan is well known in the StrongFirst community, but if you’re unfamiliar, bookmark this page. In only six weeks, it increased my bodyweight pull-ups from 16 to 24. In fact, I saw a bigger gain on this program than I did in the previous 3 years when I was still training pull-ups 2-3x/week.
And what did I learn? First, the volume is real. Over the course of 22 training sessions – I cut the plan short by a few days due to travel and logistics – I performed 1,681 pull-ups. That’s an average of 76 pull-ups each session. I’m sure people thought I performed pull-ups for a living by the time I was finished.
Second, there’s nothing magical about this program other than resting your belief in its principles: repeated exposure, greasing the groove, and always leaving something in the tank.
But the three bigger lessons I learned from this experience are below. Whether you’re looking to complete your first set of 5, or you first set of 25, they will help improve both the quantity and quality of your pull-ups.
As Craig Marker explained in this post, “greasing the groove” means practicing the same exercise frequently but never going to failure. It’s a popular StrongFirst principle because 1) it works and 2) it treats exercises as skills, rather than a something you do for a “workout.” I used this method years ago with front squats in order to dial in my technique and improve an exercise I had always dreaded.
By staying away from failure, slowly nudging the intensity, and systematically increasing my weekly volume of pull-ups, my numbers began to climb. A week into the program, I noticed I no longer had the anticipatory dread of the first (and longest) set, because I wasn’t preoccupied by the thought of missing a rep. Soon I was hitting more reps on my subsequent sets than I did on my first day, with the feeling that I had more in the tank. Hindsight is 20/20, but I wish I would’ve used this method on my pull-ups sooner.
While training for the TSC last year, I thought I was following the principles of this program, but I wasn’t. Specifically, I’d perform three all-out sets of pull-ups three times per week, going to failure each time. It felt like I was improving and I was hitting new highs for a few weeks, but then reality hit.
About a month before the TSC, my performance started to decline. I was struggling to hit numbers I had easily hit a month or two earlier, and to cap it off, I hit 17 pull-ups during the TSC for the second year in a row despite the time and effort I put into preparation. I was training harder, not smarter.
My experience with the Fighter Pull-up Plan couldn’t have been more different. I never missed a rep during the program and was blown away with how much I improved in only 22 sessions. After all, “if you train to failure, you’re training yourself to fail.”
Through the first few weeks on the program, I had a sense that I needed to make my reps feel easier if I wanted to continually improve. That’s exactly when I had a breakthrough: I needed better control of my body and to use lower threshold strategies to help my endurance.
For example, I would always attempt to pull myself as high as possible, while crushing my abs in the hollow position on the first rep. These are great strategies for attempting near max strength pull-ups – like pull-ups with The Beast, or attaining your first pull-up – but not a great strategy for saving your energy for higher reps. I’d also find my body swinging in between each rep as I tired, and so I was expending even more energy to steady myself before the next pull-up.
In order to break this habit, I started using only as much energy as necessary, and positioned a bench in front of me to break my habit of swinging. This made it so that I could only go straight up and down, and in a sense, it was re-grooving my pull-up pattern in a more efficient way. I felt an immediate difference and started saving the higher threshold strategies for when I needed to grind out a few reps at the very end.
The final lesson I learned was that when it comes to increasing your number of pull-ups, it’s really a matter of managing your mental and physical fatigue. And when you’re hanging there hoping to eke out a few more reps, it can be hard to tell the difference between the two.
While there’s no “best way” to prepare yourself for high pull-up reps, I’ve found the best strategy for me is to break large numbers into stages. The first stage is completing as many as I can in an unbroken set, because I’ve found that speeding up the time between pull-ups – but still performing them to technical proficiency – greatly increased my total. For example, the total amount of time I spent on the bar while doing 17 pull-ups last year (75 seconds) wasn’t all that much shorter than my set of 24 pull-ups (90 seconds). I believe this illustrates how energy systems still play a role when it comes to my grip strength. Being more efficient with my time helped me accomplish more, even if I start to run out of ATP at the 90 second mark.
The next stage is allowing myself to take a hand off the bar to practice the principle of “fast and loose” while still hanging with my other hand. Once I got over the initial fear of not being able to get my hand back on the bar, it felt like I had refreshed my grip and increased my “reps in the tank” by 3 to 5 pull-ups. Even a short break of 5-10 seconds has a big effect as it allows me to mentally regroup for the last few grinds.
The last stage is to allow myself to rest and regroup at the bottom, in between my last few pull-ups. Of course, I’m not going to have a conversation while hanging from the bar, but I’ve tried to find that “sweet spot” where you’re getting just enough air and rest without letting your grip fatigue at the bottom.
This program is not for the faint of heart, as it tests your commitment, mettle, and strength. But for those brave enough to try it, you will not walk away disappointed as long as you follows its principles (and maybe my lessons too).
Alex Tankskey is the founder of The Movement Lab. A former marketer and Facebook surfer, Alex changed careers when he experienced how strength can transform your life. He's now a Strength Coach under the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), StrongFirst (SFG1), Functional Movement Systems (FMS), and a certified Precision Nutrition Coach (Pn1).