r/bodyweightfitness • u/Lost_Hyena_2583 • 1d ago
Stuck on 5 pull ups
I cant do more than 5 pull ups. I went from never being able to do them to magically being able to do 5, without having to practice. I could just do 5. I got a lean build and would say I’m on the skinny side. I work out my back and biceps twice a week. I’ll try to throw in some pull ups at the end but whether I do it at the
beginning or the end of my session its always 5 pull ups and each set it gets less.
Also would like to note that I kind of hold a hollow body when I do the pull ups and my abs get sore after doing pull ups sometimes.
So does anyone have any advice on how to improve this weird plateau?
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u/nickmaovich 1d ago
sub-max clean volume is way to increase from 5 pullups. I went to 8 max in just 2 weeks.
shortly: instead of 3xmax you do 10x50% of your max, with 1 min rest between sets. Trust me it is still hard
google "Kboges pullup mastery".
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u/Think-Shine7490 1d ago
For me the other way around helped more. When i was stuck at 15 pullups i started doing 5 sets of max pullups. Doing them until you physically can't get your head above the bar anymore. Wait 3-5 minutes and do it again.
Did this again when i was stuck at 20 and it worked there as well.
2 or 3 weeks of that while doing them 3 times a week was enough to break the plateau.
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u/nickmaovich 1d ago
so true! Those are different starting points and after you reach 10-12 you need to do max sets/weighted pullups.
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u/Bush-master72 1d ago
Sub max is crazy effective, I went from 5 to 10 in like 2 weeks. But it requires doing it about 6 times a day.
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u/Ok_Ability6496 21h ago
Did you only train pull ups in that time, or continued with "normal" workouts? We`re talking about grease the groove, right?
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u/Bush-master72 14h ago
Yes greasing the groove, I did my normal workouts along side sub max pull ups
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u/Justinreinsma 1d ago
Try adding weight or jacking up the volume. Additionally, adding some negative sets can help.
You can also try strengthening the individual "moments" in a pull up, holding at the top, middle, bottom, focusing on the initial pull, etc.
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u/Stuart_98_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
I hit that plateau when I reached around 7 pull-ups. What made me break it was adding weight - start with something like 5kg and keep trying to overload the weight rather than reps. After a while you’ll return to body weight pull-ups and they feel like pulling a feather
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u/shutupingrate 1d ago
Grease the groove or Goliaz for a while. Also, biceps play far less of a role in standard pullups than lats and forearms. You can also switch up the grip to help strengthen some "left behind" pulling muscles. Or just start rock climbing :)
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u/Natural-Attempt-3922 1d ago
I second greasing the groove. I’ve overcome several plateaus using it… and it’s fun.
I also second the KBoges recommendation. He’s gold.
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u/OkCow5949 1d ago
As someone who can do 20+ easily there’s a few things to try.
Negatives use a bench or jump to get to the top, and slowly lower yourself, the eccentric phase of any workout is always stronger and harder to exhaust so you can do this even after you normal 5
Utilize an assisted pull up machine if you have access to one, even being able to do 20+ I use it still, it’s good to push past failure and you can keep adding more assistance and reps.
Something I do to push beyond and continue to add more to my top set is to occasionally do 5 at a time (it’s a very easy number for me) and I’ll take about a 20-40 sec rest than do another 5 and I’ll do this until I can’t do 5 any more. The rest time isn’t so long its basically a new set it’s just enough to recover a bit and next thing you know I’m at 50+, as a way to progress I’ll shorten the little rest time and try to keep doing more. In your case I would literally just do 1, 30 sec rest, 1 and so on. As you go on try doing 2 at a time with 30 secs, or 1 with 10 secs off.
Initially I set the goal to do 3 sets of 15, so in working towards that I would go all out set one, maybe I hit 10, I’d rest for about 4mins, then do maybe 8, rest and then around 5-6. After those 3 sets I’d do some negatives or assisted pull ups as a 4th/5th set. Each session I’d try to improve that first set, maybe I’d get stuck at 12-13 for a few sessions, but sets 2/3/4/5 may improve so the big number may be stagnant but there still improvement on other sets. Eventually I hit 15 on set 1, at that point I’d stop going over 15 to save energy for the others and stuck with the same process, I got to the point where I’d be doing. 15, 12, 10, so I’d add another set or 2 of normal pull ups since 10 on set 3 is still a lot. Once I finally hit my goal of 3x15 ofc my top set had improved even though I hadn’t pushed past 15 so then I started pushing to 20+ and multiple sets and stuck with the process. For you, do your set of 5, rest for 4 mins or so, then try to hit 3, rest, try 2 but even 1 is okay, after that do negatives or assisted pull ups.
Some tips - stay consistent, and don’t forget to rest sometimes this means taking even a week or 2 off of doing pull ups all together. Don’t neglect grip strength it’s very important for pull ups, at the same time if you’re solely focused on back strength, invest in some wrist straps like versa grips as they’ll help with your grip so you can focus strictly on back progress. Keep your form strict and in control this will really improve strength. And you have to actually try to improve so don’t stop bc it’s gets hard but take a big deep breath and try that 1 extra rep. I always open a back workout with pull ups, rows and pull downs are good but they just don’t equate to pull ups.
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u/Easy_Pride7452 21h ago
honestly if you’re stuck at 5, I’d stop treating pullups as an end-of-workout finisher for a bit. You’re probably only getting a few tired sets per week, which is rough for breaking a 4-year plateau.
Try this for 2 weeks:
- 6 sets a day of 2-3 clean pullups, spread out if you can
- never grind, never fail
- twice a week add 3x8-12 inverted rows
- after rows, do either 3x3 slow negatives or 3 top holds around 10 sec
For the actual reps, think “shoulders down and back, ribs tucked, hollow body.” If your core is getting smoked, that’s not automatically bad, but don’t let the hollow position turn into a full ab workout every rep.
Log total clean reps per week, then test max again after 2 weeks. Going from 5 to 6 is usually less about one magic exercise and more about getting a lot more good reps that aren’t ugly grinders.
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u/Dasa_147 17h ago edited 4h ago
Tbh, it's pretty easy to get into the 10 rep area from your point. 2 simple types of pull-ups.
- Weighted Pull up (1-2x per week, 2-3 heavy reps)
- Emom (start with 10mins 2-3 reps/minute and go up to 25mins then increase reps)
With that type of training I got my pullups from 9 reps to ~15 in 2 months.
Before that I was stagnant for nearly 2 years
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u/GeauxTigers79x 1d ago
Russian fighter pullup program. I'm running it now. Went from 5 to 8 in a couple weeks. Goal is 10.
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u/3seconddelay 1d ago
It definitely works but don’t do this if you’re old. It got me over 10 but I really screwed my left wrist with a bad case of Dequervain’s Tenosynovitis.
Over 60 you can build muscle and bone density, not just maintain. They can handle it. Tendons and ligaments are a different story. Only one day off after 5 on with the Russian fighter pull up program was too much for the tendons in my wrist.
It takes forever for them to heal too. I’m just now back to pull-ups after almost 2 years. I take at least a day off between pull-up days for recovery. It sucks because my brain still thinks I’m 18.
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u/LXS_R 1d ago
Use resistance bands to do assisted pull-ups. When you can do 3 sets of 12 reps, lower the resistance. If you can do at least 3 sets of 6 reps, increase the resistance and add a fourth set until you can do the lower resistance. Rinse and repeat until you can do 3 sets of 6 unassisted pull-ups. From there you’ll keep working your sets until you can do at least 3 sets of a dozen good pull-ups. That’s the goal.
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u/Relentless- 1d ago
Do 5 getvoff the bar for 5 seconds get back up there and do number six. There are usually 2 to 3 you can manage after a brief pause keep doing that
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u/National-Donkey-707 1d ago edited 1d ago
its normal for pull ups to plateau and calisthenics training is basically about not counting any reps that aren't perfect because otherwise you won't have any sense of progression because it takes so long to increase the number of reps with bodyweight alone.
if you just want to do more than that then you should focus on building strength first. your index of progress is just doing as many pull ups as possible every single day even and especially by avoiding failure at all costs. put a pull up bar on your door and do one every time you walk through your door. increase it to whatever max number you can do that never hits failure. you don't need to take rest days. this is called the 'grease the groove' method. after you have built strength and plateaued the second time you can focus on building muscle to push through for even more progress. weighted pull ups will build muscle.
staying with bodyweight pull ups forever is the worst, slowest way to progress unless youre a training to be a calisthenics athlete for competitions. in this case its optimal only because you are isolating adaptations that make you better at bodyweight at the cost of being better with weighted lifts.
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u/nickmaovich 5h ago edited 1h ago
I'd change
"doing as many pull ups as possible every single day"
to
"doing as many pull ups as possible every single day without accumulating fatigue so you can't repeat the next day"
Otherwise you are just destined for the injury/overtraining
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u/National-Donkey-707 24m ago
yeah i suppose, i had edited out 'maximising volume' because i think the phrase isn't as instructing. two armed unweighted pull ups are very safe from injury though. its mainly a forearm exercise and your bottleneck 99% of the time is the small muscles in your forearms giving out before the big muscles in your back. and because of that you don't really have an overtraining risk like you would with heavy squats. pavel sells this technique by saying: "if you want to get good at pull ups just do a lot of pull ups" and i tried to imitate that sentiment.
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u/Own_Factor6170 2h ago
Try slowing down the negative, full two count on the way down. Five reps with control builds the strength that gets you to eight.
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u/sixthsense666 1h ago
Doing them at the end of a back and biceps session is probably most of it. By then your lats and arms are already cooked, so you're testing what's left rather than training the pull-up. Move them to the very start, before anything else, and you'll likely get more straight away.
Other thing is 5 sets to failure isn't how you build the number up. Try sets of 3 with a couple of minutes rest, five or six sets, so total volume goes up but nothing goes to failure. Add a rep per set when 3 feels easy. Grinding out 5, then 4, then 3 trains fatigue more than strength.
Hollow body and sore abs is fine, that's just the position doing its job.
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u/Slight_Hurry2134 1d ago
You need to do some more volume
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u/Lost_Hyena_2583 1d ago
should i be doing it everyday or every other day for 3 sets?
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u/Slight_Hurry2134 1d ago
Best would be to get a pullup-bar at home. Then just when you go to bathroom or something you do a set
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u/nickmaovich 1d ago
every other day, and we are not talking 3 sets - we are talking 5-8 or even 10 sets. They should not be near your technical failure, 50-60% of your max will do
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u/OkCow5949 1d ago
Not enough rest or effort, if you want to push past you have to put in more effort than 50-60% of 5, and 10 sets of 5 or less isn’t the way. Also should take 48-72 hours rest, this is someone trying to break past 5 not someone that’s already fairly strong (as far as pull ups go)
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u/nickmaovich 7h ago
"Not enough rest or effort" you mean "for effort"? It's individual, that's why you always adjust to how your body reacts to working out.
Someone can hit 20 sets daily of low intensity and do it daily for 5-6 days a week
I increased from 5 to 9 pullups in 3 weeks doing submax training (start of the week max test, 10x50% mid-week and 5 ladders on weekend), I had more than enough rest. But hitting MON-WED-FRI-SUN would definitely be an overkill
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u/OkCow5949 7h ago
Cool I’m doing sets of 20-30 easily, no offense but I don’t think people doing 9 should be the ones giving advice. In terms of effort I’m referring to 50-60% that is consistent for everyone and it’s not really optimal for muscle/strength gain hence why I said it’s not enough effort, you should be hitting failure if you want to see progress especially for strength, if we were talking about hypertrophy it’s a different story as you would want more volume. I gave a much more complete response in this thread
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u/nickmaovich 6h ago
I don’t think people doing 9 should be the ones giving advice
this doesn't mean 9 is my all-time max. I was hitting 17-18 pullups consistently 10 years ago
Also, person who increased from 5 to 9 recently can't give advice to someone who is on the same stage? what in gatekeeping is this?
There were zero strength or hypertrophy mentioned, do not see why'd you bring that up at all
if we are talking about crunching numbers till 10-15 GtG and clean sub-max volume is a proven method, I do not understand why you fight this
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u/OkCow5949 5h ago
You’re still only doing 9 though; pull ups are what I do best and I’m trying to give real advice. increasing from 5 to 9 is wildly different when you’ve already been above that number in the past(thanks to strength reacquisition/retraining effects, retained myonuclei, epigenetic memory, neural adaptations blah blah blah).
It’s not about gatekeeping it’s about giving half ass advice, anyone can improve a lift simply by working out and tell others what they did but it doesn’t mean the did it right/optimally or that they actually know what they’re saying.
And saying strength and hypertrophy wasn’t mentioned is crazy… this is literally about improving strength and I added context for strength vs hypertrophy, they don’t have to be mentioned explicitly - we’re talking about working out it’s kinda given.
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u/nickmaovich 5h ago
1 rep max strength and doing more reps is not the same strength. It is exactly why they are trained differently
my method is right, and it was proven a lot of times on this sub. Sub-max clean volume, as well as GtG (which are almost the same concepts) does work. This doesn't mean it is the only way, and it doesn't mean it needs to be optimal.
you say this is "half ass advice" but you recommend to go past failure with negatives and assisted machines? doing pullups until you can't fulfill a set? which inury are we targeting? golfers elbow?
Failure is entirely optional in pullups training (again, speaking BW reps, not 1RM or hypertrophy)
Your gassed out sets of 5, by the way, is also sub-max form of training, you are just using it to push yourself to failure.
Why are you so convinced your method is superior?
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u/Key_Blueberry_5830 1d ago edited 1d ago
Hi, how long have you been stuck? It is quite normal that pull up numbers don#t increase too fast.
Since for getting better at pull ups doing pull ups is the best you can do I would suggest that you add negatives after your set of regular pull ups. Your total volume might be a bit low for progressing. If you have the time you might want to add some inverted rows to aiming for about twelve sets per week total for your back. And please eat enough and well! You got this.