Pull day exercises are meant to be fun; keep that in mind while doing them; try adding them into your routine at least once a month. This pull day routine will help you make the most out of your workouts and give you a bikini body in a few months.
Why You Should Do Pull Day Exercises
If you have heard of pull days, you probably think they’re kind of silly. But they’re a great idea.
Pull days involve doing exercises at your maximum effort, without taking any rest. For example, you can jump rope with an empty 400-pound bag tied to the end of your rope.
Pull days used to be common in the weight-lifting world. When I started in 1979, most lifters I knew said they did them. But since then, they have mostly been replaced by “recreational” exercises, like pushups, sit-ups, and abdominal crunches.
Why? Well, mostly because it’s more fun. You can do pushup and sit-ups on the machine at the gym. You can do sit-ups and abdominal crunches at home. But you can’t do them stiffly.
The theory behind pull days is that they’re good for building muscle strength. When you lift weights, you break muscle fibers. They repair themselves.
Stronger muscles have more muscle fibers, so stronger muscles are more efficient at rebuilding. But stronger muscles also take more time to repair. So your muscles get stronger quickly at first but slower later.
Which usually isn’t a problem? You’re working so hard that your muscles don’t have time to become too efficient at rebuilding.
But at some point, your muscles start becoming more efficient. Then pull days are a good idea.
But why do pull days’ work? When people first start doing them, they usually feel sore the next day. That’s because the muscles have pushed themselves to their limit.
In weight training, soreness is a sign that the muscles are rebuilding. But people don’t like sore muscles.
How to Program Your Pull Day
Pull days” are days in which you do no exercising at all. A day that consists entirely of rest is, strictly speaking, not “a pull day” because it doesn’t let you recover. But a workout followed by a rest day is the usual form, and for people interested in building muscle mass, not working out at all is unusual.
The idea behind pull days is to avoid overtraining. Repeated exercise can have cumulative negative effects. If you don’t recover between workouts, it can eventually leave you unable to train at all. Recovery is necessary but not sufficient to prevent overtraining: you also need to balance the total amount of exercise and the amount your body can handle.
There are two main ways to try to set this balance. One way is to vary the intensity of your training. A workout that is too hard can damage your muscle fiber, making it weaker. A workout that is too easy will not build enough muscle to make a difference.
Another way to set the balance is to vary the length of your workout. If your workouts are too long, your body will get used to them, not responding to further workouts. On the other hand, if you work out for short periods, your body will not recover, and you will not respond to further workouts again.
What Are The Main Exercises To Be Done On Your Pull Day?
It’s hard to think about working for a muscle group when you only do it once weekly.
You can do many exercises to work for all the major muscle groups, but you usually only do these exercises once.
This is not a problem if you only have one of these body parts. But if you have several of them, and you only do these exercises once a week, you don’t get the full benefit of all the exercises you could do.
Three of these exercises are:
Pull-ups
Pull-ups are one of the most versatile exercises you can do in your workout.
Doing pull-ups will give you a good shapely body and burning muscles. You can do pull-ups anywhere and enjoy doing them with your buddies.
As you pull yourself up, your pelvis rotates forward; this pulls your lower back into a concave shape.
With your back in this position, you feel the stretch in your hamstrings. To stay in shape, do hundreds of repetitions.
To do pull-ups, use an about waist-high bar. If you don’t have a bar, you can also use a pull-up bar attached to your rafters.
Pushups
Pushups are simple. But they are also difficult: it is easy to get tired before you get to the top when you are doing them. So there are two things to learn to do: focus on the push-up and the muscles doing the work and ignore everything else.
The push-up is the foundation of the push day, but not the only one. You won’t be able to do many pushups without good shoulders, and you won’t be able to do many pushups without good triceps. (The push day works on the strength of the whole arm, not just one muscle.)
The push-up also introduces the focus on good form. A good push-up is a stable push-up: the supporting muscles do not tire before the arm muscles do. A good push-up is a stable push-up, and it is also done in proper form. You can train good form by practicing slow pushups and maintaining the same form in as many repetitions as you can. But slow pushups take a lot of time. You can train good form by thinking about form, and this takes less time.
The key to good form is keeping the back straight. Your abdominal muscles should pull in when you stretch, your lower back should stay straight, and your shoulder blades should slide against your back. If you are working your stomach muscles, keep your stomach muscles pulled in, too.
If you practice good form, you will have to do fewer pushups. And you will learn how to do even fewer pushups: when your back gets tired, does one, two, three, then stop. Instead of stopping when you get tired, keep going until you can’t.
But if you practice good form, your pushups will last longer.
Squats
Squats, or rising from a sitting position with the knees bent, are a deceptively difficult exercise. But its difficulty is also what makes it so valuable.
Squats are for strengthening the legs, but they also teach a good lesson about getting things done.
First, squats are deceptively difficult. You can’t just sit down and do them. According to Professor James P. Lattimer, a leading authority on exercise physiology, it takes 30 minutes or more to develop the strength to do a single set of 20 squats. You have to build up the strength to be able to do 20 sets of squats.
Do the squats every day, and the strength will come. But you can’t do 20 sets of squats every day. Every day you’ll have to do fewer sets. Some days, you won’t be able to do squat sets at all.
So the trick is to do squat every day and to build strength and confidence slowly.
That is also the secret to getting things done.
Sample Training Schedule with Progressions for Someone Who Has Never Done Pull Day Exercises
Pull day exercises are a very important part of any training plan. As a beginner, I would only recommend doing pull day exercises if you have a good base built up and can handle it.
If you have never done pull day exercises before and don’t know how to progress them, then you will need a sample training schedule to follow. If you are unsure how to progress your exercises, you will also need some advice on how to do this.
I am going to show you a sample training schedule for someone who has never done pull day exercises before and some advice on how to progress them.
Final Words
We hope you enjoyed our article about pull day exercises! It can be fun to spice up a workout routine and get a different feel from other exercises.
Many athletes, individuals, and fitness buffs looking for an added challenge to their workout routine will incorporate some form of pulling movements into their training.
The deadlift, the row, and the pull-up can create a more balanced physique. Whichever pull movement you decide to use, the key is to include it in your training routine regularly.
