Pull-ups are a strength training exercise that offers significant gains in developing the upper body, so some might be tempted to do pull-ups every day. With YouTube, and the proliferation of personal fitness blogs, many fitness challenges are popping up on a regular basis. One recently was to do 100 pull-ups a day for 30 days.
But is it really a good idea, and is it a really effective way to build muscle in the long run? Probably not. While doing pull-ups every day can have some benefits, overall it's more complicated than that.
Doing pull-ups every day: the risks
A short-term challenge
Before you start doing pull-ups every day, you need to take stock of your goals. Are you looking to bulk up, build endurance, or just challenge yourself to test your resolve?
Strength training programs in the form of short-term challenges often have the disadvantage of containing an excessive training volume, which does not accommodate recovery. Even for a trained athlete, doing 100 pull-ups every day can be overkill. Indeed, it can mostly work for a short time, but in the long run, these training patterns will not give you optimal results.
Conversely, if you choose this mode of training over the long term, you risk developing muscle imbalances: the pull-ups only work the upper body, and in particular the pectorals, trapezius and rhomboids, and you risk neglecting the other muscles by favoring pull-ups.
To optimize your training as much as possible: Active recovery in bodybuilding: optimize your training
Training poorly optimized for mass gain
After intense training the body needs to recover. According to numerous studies, to see the concrete gains of a sports session, the muscles need at least 48 hours of rest.
So, except for professional athletes who need a more frequent training rhythm, the same muscle should be used during a weight training session no more than 3 times a week.
While you may actually see muscle gains in your pecs, traps, and rhomboids over time, doing pull-ups every day just isn't the optimal method for muscle development. By letting your body recover between sessions, each pull you perform will have better results.
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Possibly Dangerous Training
Apart from the problems of imbalance in training and lack of efficiency, doing pull-ups every day can cause you serious health problems that will slow you down in your workouts, which would be totally counterproductive . By following this training regime, you risk several things:
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Wounds to the shoulders and elbows. Especially if you haven't been strength training for a long time, your joints will struggle to withstand the daily pressure of your pull-ups.This fatigue in the joints will make you much more susceptible to injury
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Even if you don't go so far as to directly injure yourself by doing pull-ups every day, you risk making them less effective. So when you want to use your muscles and joints in the rest of your workouts, or in everyday life, you may experience strong muscle fatigue due to the fact that your body will have already reached its limits.
- By performing the same exercise every day at a high level of intensity, you run the risk of overtraining. Overtraining is a phenomenon that can cause complications in the body at the muscular, nervous, bone and hormonal levels. It occurs when you consistently exceed the amount of training your body can recover from over time.
Also read: Massage and stiffness: how to optimize your recovery?
The potential benefits of daily pull-ups
Despite the many reasons not to do pull-ups every day, no workout can be completely devoid of positives.
Although these benefits would be maximized by allowing recovery time between sessions, here are the positives you can expect if you decide to do pull-ups every day:
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Technically, you will get better at pull-ups. Pull-ups are a technical exercise, which is more complex to perform than it looks. By practicing it every day, your movements will be more efficient, and even if you stop doing daily pull-ups after a while, you will probably notice that this technique will remain durable.
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You will have better stamina. One of the main positives is that your body will become accustomed to delivering force at narrow intervals. This means that you will be able to perform more repetitions of the same exercise.
- You will gain muscle mass in your upper body. Again, to a lesser extent than if you allowed a rest period, but you would still have gains. These physical results will take longer to show than increases in endurance and strength, but by continuing to train long enough, you will be able to see these gains directly.
In parallel, read: Lose your lower back fat: 9 tips
How to incorporate pull-ups into your daily training?
Listening to your body to adapt your training
The first thing to do to integrate pull-ups into your daily training in a healthy and effective way is to know your limits. To do this, test how many pull-ups you can perform in a series before failing. Make sure to do this test while warmed up, at the start of your session to be in optimal shape, and 48 hours after your last chest, traps or arms session. You can use this number as a guide to how far you can push yourself.
Also, during your sessions, and after them, pay close attention to the signals that your body sends you. If you feel unusual pain during your pull-ups, or if you pushed yourself too much during your session, even if you do pul-ups every day, take a recovery time .If problems persist during this recovery time, be sure to see a professional to check for injury
Also read: Australian pull-up: how to sculpt your back and biceps?
How often should you do pull-ups?
If you choose not to do pull-ups every day, but still want to experience the muscle gains from this exercise, exactly how many pull-ups should you do? For optimal muscle-building results, you should do pull-ups 2-3 times a week.
In terms of the intensity of the sessions, you can alternate between a lighter session and a more intense session. For example, if your maximum in a set is 10 pull-ups you can do a lighter session with more sets (5 reps 7 times), and a more intense session with fewer heavier sets (8-10 reps 5 times) .
Again, these numbers are not a rule of thumb, and first and foremost you should listen to your body to find out what you are capable of.
To get the most advice: 6 steps to doing pull-ups with rubber band
How do I go about doing pull-ups every day?
If you feel that you don't need 48 hours of recovery between two pull-up sessions, you can still choose to do pull-ups every day. But be careful, to do it, be sure that you do it well. The optimal way to do this again depends on your max number of reps in a set.
We recommend staying within a calculated distance of your maximum number of reps. For example, if your max is two pull-ups, start by doing 3 or 4 sets of a single pull-up. If your max is 12, stay between 8 to 10 pull-ups, repeated over 3 or 4 sets.
If you keep this distance at your max, you'll avoid most of the risks of doing pull-ups every day. Of course, as you build endurance, you can re-test and adjust your daily pull-ups to your new maximum.
Finally, if you are going to do pull-ups every day, don't forget to supplement your training with other movements. If you only do pull-ups, you will inevitably develop muscle imbalances. Be sure to incorporate all major muscle groups, including the abs, entire lower body, and muscles in the back and arms that are unaffected by the pull-ups.
Summary: Is doing pull-ups every day really a good idea?
Finally, there is never a single answer in bodybuilding. All bodies and goals are different, and don't need the same thing. Doing pull-ups every day is, in theory, not a good idea: it presents several health risks, and is not the optimal way to build strength.
However, if you are careful to control yourself to stay below your limit, and you need little recovery time, you can choose to do pull-ups every day.
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