I started doing pull-ups and some experienced hands kept saying my form wasn't standard, that I wasn't engaging my back.

I actually know, when training pull-ups, my back muscles haven't felt it yet, my arms just can't hold it. I know that the arms are overcompensating, and the back muscles aren't effectively trained,

But when I try to achieve a standard form, to feel the muscle engagement of the back muscles, I can't do it!

However, I have an advantage, I'm quite nimble and good at summarizing methods.

Having a smart brain is a good thing, and later I really found 4 methods, and after that, pull-ups became my strong point, and the feeling of back muscle engagement became clearer and clearer.

I. Improve pull-up control, practice every day

If you can only do 4 pull-ups, you won't feel the engagement of the back muscles. This is perfectly normal,

Because there is no space for you to exert yourself, you can't finish the movements, let alone say they're standard.

I started with 10 pull-ups before I felt the engagement of the back muscles and achieved a standard pull-up.

Therefore, my concept may be different from others. For pull-ups, first focus on the number of repetitions, then on the standard form.

As long as you increase the number of repetitions, there's more space for you to exert yourself, then you can correct the movement.

And to increase the number of repetitions, you need to increase the frequency and proficiency, so my approach is to practice pull-ups every day.

I usually do 3 sets of pull-ups every morning, until I reach a state of exhaustion.

Within a month, my pull-ups increased from barely 4 to more than 10. Strictly speaking, it's 10.

II. Do related muscle warm-ups, activate hip and shoulder

Especially for fitness beginners, you must pay more attention to warm-up, you can't directly start with movements, don't just look at experienced hands and start with movements,

Because experienced hands spend the first few sets of movements and light weight movements as warm-ups, their ability is already there, so don't imitate arbitrarily.

Warm-up is very important for pull-ups, whether you can do the movements in a standard way, whether you can do more repetitions, whether you can breathe normally, all depend on the warm-up.

Generally, the warm-up mainly warms up two parts, one is the hip and the other is the shoulder.

The choice of actions is also important, some actions are very useless, that's not a warm-up, that's just wasting time.

I choose two actions, one is the arched body front bend to warm up the hips, and the other is the rope face pull to warm up the shoulders.

Each action is done 10 times with a small weight, so it's easy to feel the back muscle engagement when doing pull-ups.

III. Reduce the difficulty of pull-ups, assisted with resistance bands

You may have a feeling, the more weight the action is, the harder it is to feel the muscle engagement, but the lighter the action, it's easier to feel the muscle engagement.

Are pull-ups heavy or light weight? To be honest, I currently do 20 pull-ups, but this action is still heavy for me,

So when I reach the end of the pull-up, it's still difficult to feel the engagement of the back muscles.

So how to solve it is to reduce the difficulty of pull-ups to stimulate the back muscles.

I usually choose to use resistance bands to assist with pull-ups, and some gyms provide pull-up equipment, which can also be used.

Whether to assist is not a binary question, but a multi-choice question.

In one training, you can divide it into two stages, the first stage is the ability enhancement stage, mainly to improve pull-up control, so no assistance is needed, and no need to worry about whether you can feel the engagement or not.

The second stage is the muscle growth stage, mainly to stimulate the back muscles, then use resistance bands for assistance, even if it's not good or not, as far as your ability is concerned, this way is more effective for training the back muscles.

IV. Correct the pull-up posture, close to the bar

Read this article, it's actually for this paragraph, but if you don't have a foundation and can't exert your ability, you just read it and practice it, it will be a waste.

The action has two requirements, one is to keep your chest up, don't hunch your shoulders.

Many people are pursuing the lower jaw passing over the bar, but it's not necessary, a wide-spaced jaw passing over the bar is definitely dominated by shoulder compensation.

So when training the back muscles with pull-ups, we should try to keep the chest muscles upright, no matter whether the jaw passes over the bar or not.

The second requirement is to approach the bar from a horizontal plane.

I used to only do the first requirement, just keeping my chest up, but I didn't do the second requirement, the body was too far from the bar at that time, it was not easy to feel the back muscle engagement.

After I started to approach the bar, it was wonderful, the back muscle engagement became very obvious.

Specifically, when you pull the body up, you should make the bar pass through your nose, this is horizontal approaching the bar.

Achieving these two requirements is actually to open up the arms, which can enhance the proportion of back muscle engagement, making vertical back muscle training more pure.

If you really achieve these 4 points, your pull-ups will become very beautiful and stable.

PS. Some people have seen that my pull-ups are not stable, I had a period of time when my pull-ups were as stable as a sculpture.

But I abandoned these points later, so my pull-ups deformed, sorry.