Hey {{first name | reader}},
It’s Tuesday, which means your weekly fitness check-in. Welcome to Week #18. I’m back in my rhythm at home (weight-dropping incidents aside), and this week’s hike reminded me how often women underestimate their upper body strength. Somewhere between the hills and a fast-paced conversation at the front of the pack1, the topic of pull-ups came up— specifically, how many women still see one strict pull-up as impossible. It isn’t. A pull-up is not some magical feat reserved for gymnasts, teenage boys, or women with suspiciously active fitness Instagram accounts. It’s a trainable skill.
Marshalls Beach, San Francisco
When I was a kid I always achieved the presidential physical fitness award2— usually the top kid in the class— but one thing that irked me about the way the test was conducted was that while the boys did pull-ups, the girls weren’t allowed to. We had to just do the arm hang. I always knew that I was as strong as the little boys and resented not having a chance to show it.
While I was in graduate school I trained a lot, and I got quite strong. I wasn’t really focused on pull-ups until a few years later while teaching at the University of Kansas and dabbling with crossfit. That’s when pull-ups became a goal. I was pretty strong at the time, so I could almost do one, and after a few weeks of focus and commitment I got to one. At my peak I was able to do a set of 15, currently I’m at five sets of five.
First, I’d like to clarify exactly what a pull-up is. You take an overhand grip, grab an overhead bar with arms shoulder width (or a bit wider) and pull yourself up until the chin clears the bar. You should start with arms fully extended. In crossfit you’ll see folks kipping or using forward momentum from the legs to get an extra boost. This is not strict form and in my book, does not count.3
It’s a mistake to think that the pull-up is primarily an arm exercise. It’s mostly a back exercise. You pull yourself up by engaging the lats. The biceps help but if you focus on the biceps you’ll never successfully pull yourself up. Stabilizing the core is also essential in keeping the strict form for the pull-up. The body also needs balance, so if you're working on pull-ups you should also be working on pushups.
You will see assisted pull-up machines in the gym. Assisted pull-up machines can be useful, but many people rely on them too heavily and fail to build the core control strict pull-ups require. Your mileage may vary, but I'd start with negatives instead. Some exercises to help you get ready for pull-ups include lat pull downs, single arm dumbbell rows, and bent over barbell rows. Before you focus on the pull-ups make sure that you don’t have any lingering shoulder or arm injuries.4
Three focused sessions per week is plenty. pull-ups respond better to consistency than heroic overtraining. Here’s how you do the negatives. Stand on a step or a bench so that you’re in the ending pull-up position with your chin over the bar and lower yourself to the ground in a controlled fashion. You should feel your lats activating as you lower yourself. When you first try this gravity will pull you down quickly. The goal is to go as slowly as possible. Try using a 3-5 second descent.
When you’ve mastered the slow descent move on to jumping pull-ups. Try these when you’ve gotten to the point when doing 5 or more negatives is easy. Jump up to grip the bar and use the momentum of the jump to help pull your chin over the bar. Lower yourself down to the ground in the same controlled fashion that you used for the negatives. Start with a set of 5 jumping pull-ups. When you can do 10, move on to trying to do your first pull-up.
The first one will be hard. Concentrate on pulling down with your lats, keeping your core tight, and activating the biceps only at the end. If you’re unable to do it, try again but get a friend to give you a slight boost by placing their palm on the small of your back and pushing you up.
📖 ASK ME ANYTHING
Question: How long do I have to train to be able to do a pull-up?
Answer: It depends where you’re starting, but this is not an overnight project unless you’re already close. If you’re reasonably strong, a few weeks of focused work may do it. If you’re starting from scratch, think months, not miracles. The good news? Progress is remarkably reliable if you stay consistent.
💡 MYTH BUSTING
Myth: Women aren’t strong enough to do pull-ups.
Reality: Women absolutely can do pull-ups. The issue is rarely capability; it’s usually lack of specific training. pull-ups demand strength, yes— but they also demand skill, coordination, and practice.
It’s a fact that women have less upper body strength than men, so it’s easier for a man of a similar size to be able to do pull-ups than a woman. Pull-ups are also hard, one is literally pulling their entire body weight up from the ground. It takes a lot of work to be able to do a pull-up. One has to work on overall strength first, and then one has to focus and train specifically to do the pull-ups.
The limiting factor for most women isn't raw strength — it's that they've never trained the specific movement pattern. Start with negatives. It works. Lifting my nephew's bag into the overhead bin? That's a pull-up. You may already be stronger than you think.
🍽️ RADISH FUEL BOX:
Pull-ups are a strength exercise, which means recovery nutrition matters. My go-to post-lift meal when I don't want to cook: a can of sardines or smoked trout on rye crispbread with whatever's in the fridge — sliced cucumber, a few capers, hot sauce. Takes three minutes. High protein, omega-3s, no cooking required. The sardines sound alarming. They're not.5
📚 WORTH YOUR TIME
If you’d like a deeper technical breakdown, Barbend’s “A Ladies’ Guide to Your First Pull-Up” is one of the better beginner-friendly resources out there.
💪 TRY THIS WEEK
Start Your Baseline
Find a pull-up bar this week — a gym bar, a doorframe bar, a playground. Dead hang from it for as long as you can. Note the time. That's your starting point. Then do five negatives: climb or jump to the top position, chin over the bar, and lower yourself as slowly as you can. Five reps, three times this week. That's it. You've started.
Stay strong,
{{first name | reader}}
P.S. The girls should have been allowed to do pull-ups all along.
1 Even when I consciously try to slow down, I somehow end up leading. Apparently, my commitment to “taking it easy” remains largely theoretical.
2 A gloriously Cold War-era fitness gauntlet designed when national leaders feared Soviet children were outperforming us in both missile production and situps, it was phased out in 2012 under President Obama, but like a lot of artifacts of the past the Trump administration has brought it back. Here’s a fun take.
3 If you’re going to put in the effort to do it, do it right, like the marines. If momentum is doing most of the work, congratulations: you’ve invented aggressive swinging.
4 I had gotten to 8 and was on track for my goal of a set of 10 uninterrupted pull-ups last year when an elbow injury took me out of circulation. Nothing builds respect for tendon health quite like temporarily losing the ability to do something you were smug about.
5 Good sardines are wildly underrated. Bad sardines, admittedly, are a crime.