You want strength?
You want greater muscle mass in your back?
Pull ups will help you achieve these goals. But if that’s all you’re hoping to gain from them, you’re missing out.
What’s the hype about pull ups?
Not only an exercise that’s great for your back, pull ups boost muscle mass in the biceps, while also improving your strength in different ways.
But pull ups can also make you an all-round healthier person. It can be said that pull ups are the king of fitness.
On a basic level, when you make your core and back stronger, this has a direct positive effect on the way you carry yourself, both inside and outside of the gym.
There are many valuable benefits of pull ups, so let’s look at 10 of the best.
1. They Work Many Muscles At Once
Pull-ups help you to work many muscles simultaneously:
The latissimus dorsi (largest muscle in the back), rhomboids (upper back), trapezius (a muscle that stretches from the back of the neck to the shoulder), deltoids, triceps, pectoralis (“pecs”), and brachialis (upper arm muscle).
Since pull-ups are known as a compound exercise because of how many muscles get a work out from them, they can help you bulk up in one movement.
2. You Get Good Grip
When pulling your body weight, you need to have a strong grip.
By improving your grip strength, one of the benefits of pull ups is that you can excel at other activities that require a good grip, such as martial arts and climbing.
However, a strong grip is also associated with having a stronger heart.
Research published in peer-reviewed journal PLOS One found that people with better handgrip strength had a healthier heart structure and heart function because they were pumping more blood per heartbeat.
3. Pull Ups Burn Fat
If you want to lose weight, add more pull ups to your workout routine. Since they make use of many muscles, they allow you to use up more energy and burn more calories.
Strive to do as many pull-ups as you can in 30 seconds to give your body a fat-burning boost! Best of all, the leaner you are, the easier it will be to pull your weight to the bar.
4. You Do Better Cardio
You might not associate cardio with pull ups, but they’re definitely linked. If you do multiple sets of pull ups with short pauses in-between, you boost your body’s circulation that fuels your muscles.
The whole point of cardio workouts is to increase your heart rate, so you want to try to do as many pull ups as possible, or include them as part of your other cardiovascular routine.
5. You Can Boost Your Biceps
While everyone talks about getting stronger lats from pull ups, one of the lesser-known benefits of pull ups is that if you tighten your hold on the bar, this will force your biceps to do some of the work, helping them to grow muscle over time.
In addition, by slowing down your speed when doing a pull up to around 45 seconds per set, you can stimulate more muscle growth in your arms.
6. You Make Your Abs Scream
To maintain your form and prevent moving around too much during a pull up, your core has to be engaged.
As you do more pull ups, this will happen more frequently because your other muscle groups will start to feel the heat, making the pull up a great exercise for your stomach.
7. They Make You Stronger In Your Daily Life
Pull ups are known as closed kinetic chain exercise, which basically means they work muscles that are used regularly in your daily activities.
After doing pull ups for some time, you’ll be able to pull heavy bags and lift items from high kitchen shelves with greater ease.
Closed kinetic chain exercises are also safer to do because they allow your body’s natural structure to determine how your joints move, creating a more natural range of motion.
8. You Stand Taller
After doing this exercise for a while, you’ll see one of the pull up benefits straight away: you’ll have better posture, enabling you to walk taller and look leaner.
Best of all, you won’t be hunched over due to back pain because pull ups help to strengthen your back muscles.
9. You Don’t Need A Gym
Ever noticed how some guys who never step inside a gym can be ripped from doing pull ups?
That’s because pull ups are convenient.
If you don’t have a pull-bar handy, you can use gymnastic rings or even a strong tree branch in your backyard to get a few reps down.
Versatility is one of the best benefits of pull ups. They’re super-easy to incorporate into your daily schedule.
In addition, you can easily increase the difficulty of pull ups by adding resistance to them, which can help you build more muscle.
This can take the form of wearing a weight belt when doing pull ups. There are also many pull up variations you can do to increase their intensity.
10. You Get A V-Shape
One of the benefits of pull ups we mentioned earlier is that they target your latissimus dorsi, giving you a stronger back.
While this is great for improving your strength, an appearance-related perk of it is that your lats are the first muscle that’s responsible for giving you that V-shape many men want to achieve. So not only will pull ups make you feel great, but look great too.
Conclusion
If you want to get into better shape, you need to add pull ups to your exercise routine. As you get stronger, you’ll be able to do more variations of them, making you tougher and healthier so you can excel both inside and outside of the gym.
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