Why Women Struggle With Pull-ups

The reasons why pull-ups are such a challenge are precisely the same reasons why they are one of the greatest of exercises. Many women, even fit athletes, struggle with them or don't bother trying. Many men are in the same boat, but here I'll focus on some of the challenges unique to women.

Here are a few of the largest reasons why women struggle with pull-ups.

1. Females are born this way:

If you took a cut of muscle from the upper body of a female and placed it under a microscope, you would visualize spindly pink gossamer threads, as opposed to a male muscle fibers, which appear as tetrahedral bundles of steel and steak.

That's actually a lie. At the cellular level, male and female muscle fibers are no different in appearance. But there are a few differences having to do with muscle structure.

       -Females, on average, have a lower proportion of fast twitch muscle fibers and a higher proportion of slow twitch endurance type muscle fibers.

       -Pound-for-pound, men and women have nearly equivalent lower body strength. But this is not true for the upper body, which mostly has to do with the fact that men carry relatively more of their total muscle mass up top.

       -Women generally have more loose, flexible joints, and men generally have more stiff, stable joints. This type of hypermobility may allow you to reach your left thumb behind your back to your right hip, but it's not helpful for functional strength.

But many ladies can easily overcome these. It's worth it!

2. Many women don't care about pull-ups:

But they should. The typical person (of either gender) does not appreciate what pull-ups can do for their overall function and appearance. Pull-ups are an easily accessible way to build upper body size and strength. They work the arms and core (yes, the lats and abs are huge components of the core), which helps with staying efficient and injury free during running and other athletic pursuits.

All of those chasing "toned" should recall that it's impossible to appear that way without carrying a fair amount of muscles. And it's the muscle that is metabolically active and useful around the clock, which allows you to eat like a human (rather than a mouse) without gaining fat weight.

3. Many women who do care about pull-ups are doing them wrong:

Let's say that a teenage boy can't do even one pull-up and decides that he would like to give it a try. He will jump up and hang. He will flail his feet and tuck his knees and inch his way up with poor form. Later on he will bang out a few shoddy, half-range of motion pull-ups and claim that he can do them. Soon after that he will be able to do a half dozen full reps with decent form.

Contrast this to the typical female, who is far more likely to obey the rules of training: slow controlled reps, full range of motion, and no bouncing. She reaches up and finds herself stuck hanging from the bar in the bottom position. Unable to do one appropriate, full repetition, she proceeds to do sets of 10 pull-ups with the assistance of the huge rubber band for assistance, or a TRX suspension trainer or the Planet Fitness machine that provides lift under her feet.

Her low ego, good form, by-the-book training works against her. What she is missing out on is time under tension. Time where she must give her brain the input of what it feels like to support her full body weight. Time where the biceps, shoulders, lats and abs must fire quickly and in sync.

I'm not saying that it's always wise to use poor form during resistance training, but learning the pull-up is one situation when some leg swing and a lot of controlled partial reps are relatively low-risk and extremely beneficial.

Give this a try:

1. Hang from the bar with upper back engaged and chin over the bar in the "up" position. You may have to jump up or get something to step up on.

2. Keep your muscles locked and engaged as you lower a little less than half way down.

3. Once you hit that point, quickly transition to pull yourself up. Congrats! You just did a partial rep.

4. With your body now in the "up" position, again lower yourself, this time VERY slowly, through the entire lowering range of motion until your elbows are straight. Be sure to keep the shoulder blade muscles engaged until the end.

This is one rep. Repeat it for 2 to 3 sets of just 2 to 3 reps. Do not rush the recovery period between sets! Remember that the main thing that you want to keep track of is time under tension. Be patient. Give it a month or two, but keep trying.

Let me know how you do!

Orthopedic Snake Oil

The original.
No to be confused with the poser snake oils like emu oil.

Snake Oil never went away. In terms of popularity, snake oil is more potent then ever! Let us put aside the fad diets, most (but not all) supplements, over-the-counter joint creams (Emu oil, really), or exercise gadgets. For now I'll run with what I know well, the structure and function of the neuromusculoskeletal system.

To be clear, I'm rarely against any one treatment or method, especially if the side effects are minimal. If you have found some item or method that sounds suspect to me but has proven beneficial, who am I to tell you to stop? What I'm against is all the weaseling and pandering and clearly false promises in the healthcare and wellness communities.

The gimmicky sales and fraudulent claims can be found everywhere. A good example of medical pseudo-science can be found at Inlet Physical Medicine.

http://inletphysicalmedicine.com/neck-shoulder-pain-relief/

First off, the name. To me the word "physical" implies some type of active involvement where the patient (er, customer) actually has to move or, ya know, do something on their end. But there is not one hint of this. The entire site speaks "it is up to us to fix you and unlike everybody else, we can."

Most of the site is clearly written to please a Google bot far above an actual person. Which is fine, but let's not pretend this is medical information. For example;

In Murrells Inlet, SC, chronic pain management, is managed by the medical professionals at Inlet Physical Medicine, who work within physical medicine disciplines to create a customized treatment plan.

They go on to make many claims, chief among them being that you will Avoid Surgery with a New, Non-Surgical Treatment That Delivers Safe, Lasting and Remarkably Effective Results!

I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, for I understand that neck and back pain is common, complex, and often treated inappropriately. But the magic healers at Inlet Physical Medicine are apparently standing against the world.

They ask how it can be possible that a treatment for back and neck pain does not exist. I suppose they have not considered the countless people who physical therapists (and other providers) help every day. No, most people do not fail traditional models of physical therapy. I see most (but certainly not all) of my clients walk out the door feeling and functioning much better.

No, orthopedic doctors usually do not rush to surgery. I've spent hours in the exam room with some of the most well known orthopedic doctors in central PA. My point of contention is with their emphasis on cortisone injections, but that's another matter. But they definitely do not push surgery until patients are practically begging for it.

BANDS AROUND THE WAIST
seem to be an enduring gimmick.

Inlet Physical Medicine claims to possess a technology that allows them to determine precisely what's wrong and where the pain is coming from. To the average Joe this sounds like common sense. But to the trained clinician it's generic bunk. How are they determining precisely what's wrong? With nerve conduction studies? Diagnostic ultrasound or MRI? Palpation? I would guess that it's something gimmicky such as detecting "hot spots" of temperature variation along the spine. Where are their reliability studies? Any legitimate healthcare professional will freely admit that there is no one method to reliably diagnose all typical sources of pain.

Another no:

Their "Spinal Decompression" is neither new nor cutting edge. What's relatively new is using that term rather than calling it "spinal traction." Although the details of the on:off cycle may vary between typical "decompression" and traction, there is no evidence that any one method provides a better outcome.

They also claim that Plasma Rich Protein and Laser Therapy are sure-fire ways to lasting pain relief. These modalities have been proven somewhat effective at the tissue level, and I would possibly use these if I had easy access to them. But there is far more to recovering well. For example, lets assume that we use these to facilitate healing of damaged and irritated tissues. The root of typical orthopedic problems is often mechanical (movement-related) in nature. Functional well in the long-term almost always requires consistent movement-related intervention.

One yes:

Yes I understand that just because I don't understand or believe in a certain treatment does NOT mean that it doesn't work. For this I rely upon a collective. I've worked taking formal and informal notes on thousands of typical and atypical people typical and atypical problems over the last 15 years. I've developed professional and personal relationships with a handful of family physicians, orthopedists, podiatrists, physiatrists, dentists, pain management doctors, and personal trainers. Over time, the truth gradually comes out.

In the end, I suppose that the real problem is the complex levels of bureaucracy among traditional healthcare professionals. Not that greedy and fraudulent mainstream professional don't exist. But even the sharpest clinicians with the best of intentions are usually rushed and unable to address their patients from a holistic, "whole person" perspective. They will not cater to a persons need to shun responsibility (at least in part) for their problem.They are unable to always offer clients a compassionate ear and take the time to research and refer them to an appropriate provider.

But there are plenty of pseudo scientists who will...

Instead try
Examine.com

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/books

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
American Physical Therapy Association
American Academy of Orthopedics

Crossfit fixed my sore knee

This past Memorial Day I made an actual appearance outside of my basement and back yard, participating in a Crossfit event known as The Murph Challenge. Given the chance to sleep in and lolly-gag on a hot day, insane people report to the gym and wear a 20-pound vest and run 1 mile, do 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, and 300 squats, and run another mile. I finished (which I guess is saying a lot) at around the 51-minute mark.

This type of strength-endurance grind is not exactly my forte. I'm still far less into the workout of the day and more into "How high can I jump and climb up on this tree or roof and jump down."

The Murph was formidablee despite my 6-minute mile, well over 400 pound squat, chin-up +180 pounds and single arm/leg push ups. There were a few key equipment malfunctions and I'm fairly sore today. But I have renewed appreciation for strength-endurance and I'm thankful to have tried something different.

Being the exercise programming chief for well over 40 hours every week, I cherish the chance to show up, have a good attitude, and simply do what I'm told to do. No matter the location, afterward I try to pause and consider "What can be learned from the days activity?" And now we're getting to the point...

With 10-days before The Murph I experienced a sharp and severe pain in my left knee. This was considered a win/fail because it happened while successfully tuck-jumping what is close to my personal record. Such is the nature of doing maximal effort plyos in middle age.

Anyway, the knee hurt to the extent that I skipped "real" lifting in favor of some rehab and strength/endurance type work. Three days prior to Murph I could run well enough but not full blast, and bending as in a squat or jump remained painful.

On the day of The Murph I downed three ibuprofen and decided that I would try to put the knee out of my mind. I ran with a loaded pack and squatted 300 times and got up and down off the floor without a single jolt. I assumed there would be dues to pay after cooling down and the IBU wore off. But everything remains much better.

Did Crossfit fix my sore knee? Shall we call it "working it out" or something else?

We rarely hear about the myriad of physical and mental good that training accomplished every day. I'm not referring to gym selfies and fitspiration, but being resilient and capable as a human. So often we hear about the injuries (or maybe it's just the PTs).

We assume that the past structure and function of our musculoskeletal system is a good indicator of what's to come. We expect our body to work when called upon. But we shouldn't. Nobody is getting younger. People get hurt doing all kinds of things, and those are the ones you hear about.

This is not to say that all methods and means of training are equal. They're not. But we take credit for our accomplishments and shift the blame in our failures (most non-traumatic injuries being a mix of deserved repercussion and accident). People get strong and fit and injured and lean and fast doing Crossfit and a lot of other things. Just like car mechanics, barbers, and physical therapists, there is better and worse Crossfit. This depends to a great extent on quality coaching.

We would all prepare better, function better, and recover much better when we acknowledge our choice in the matter of what we do (or hold from) with our physical being. The brain effects the body effects the brain, on and on. Working for nearly two decades as a physical therapist and trainer (and my own training successes and failures), I've witnessed the dramatic effects that pre-injury expectations and state-of-mind has on recovery and final outcome.

From elite athletes to Netflix champions, there will always be little reward with little risk. Whether proactively or by default, you have chosen your own good, the path that you find some type of value in. Hopefully you will set aside time to take inventory of where you're headed and manage the bumps in your chosen path.

A fast & easy means to cosmic gains and eyeball-shattering rippedness

"Simple does not mean easy. Simple is often harder than complex."

        -Steve Jobes

Donny and his parents are my good friends and neighbors. I love his enthusiasm for fitness and parkour type activities. Donny is at the stage of the game where an immediate burst of energy is always on reserve. He will take on a backyard obstacle course, shaving seconds from his PR until your thumbs ache from pressing the stopwatch.

Donny has been training for less than nine months. In that time he's improved from zero to a dozen pull-ups. He can climb and hang and tumble and nearly land a back flip on flat ground. His physique has notably changed.

Donny has a lot of questions. He wants to get faster and stronger and see his abs, like nearly every other male on the planet. I...well, try.

I advise him to sprint fairly short distances, focusing on powerful push-off and quick turnover of his feet and resting a lot in between efforts.

Donny wants to do bicep curls and bench press and he bangs out crappy form push-ups. I tell him to instead master the basics, like what it means make push-ups harder with a neutral spine and proper shoulder slot.

I advise him to hang and climb and do challenging tuck jumps focusing on core control and soft landings.

I advise him not to worry about ab-shredder-this and boot-camp-circuit-that and instead focus on getting his hips stronger through some variations of squats and dead lifts. 14-year olds can go all day but I have yet to meet one with too much power.

I advise him to pound the lean meats, fruits, and vegetables and limit but not eliminate treats.

Donny responds with shallow head nods, staring off into space. I've seen this before from other young men.

"Okay, sure. Now give me the real advice..."

"But the guys Youtube videos say..."

"How do you isolate the lower abs?..."

Just like everyone with a rudimentary interest in training, Donny is plagued with information overload, so many Youtube guys and gals providing good and bad advice. In this day and age, knowing what not to do is an exceedingly rare and valuable commodity.

Most teenagers (and their elders) do either nothing in terms of training or they enthusiastically dive into a haphazard approach of over-doing it. But the sweet spot lies in the rhythm of repeated and systematic effort and recovery

At the very least, Donny sees me as one who appreciates what he wants to accomplish and can establish a means to get there. I hope that he realizes the value in one who goes before him and can save him a lot of time and trouble.

I hope that he believes that it's unnecessary and impractical to do everything at once.

I hope he trusts that authentic change and improvement takes time. I have asked Donny to be patient and keep up with what he should be doing for at least three to six months, which translates to 3 to 6 millennia in the life of a teenager.

I hope he learns to appreciate the value of regular, simple and systematic hard work over any notion of magic exercises, workouts, or supplements.

I hope he comes to understand that the real miracle exists in the process and that any simple and easy way removes the most valuable aspect of training.

There truly is more at stake than sharper abs and landed back flips, goals or home runs or rushing yards or what-have-you.

Olympic Lifts are usually unnecessary

Athletes and other fitness minded people sometimes ask me about the Olympic Lifts. Click here for a decent synopsis of what these are referring to.

Of course the cost/benefit of doing these movements depends on your training status and goals. But we'll move past the hard evidence and canned answers in order to get down to some solid opinion. This video of an amateur hitting an impressive lift is a prime example of both the good and the bad of the clean, one of the simplest Olympic Lifts. 





Olympic lifts are low-tech, high effort, effective movements. They will absolutely improve explosive power. But so do other things. And unless you're competing in the sport of Olympic weightlifting or other fitness competitions that require them, the Olympic lifts are usually unnecessary.

1. There are better ways to gain power.

Fitness professionals often talk about how Olympic lifting trains athletes to be more powerful. And I agree that they are a great way to increase the capacity of the nervous system to generate a lot of force quickly.

Gaining power is all about making your nervous system AMPED. To apply strength to game-speed functional performance, I prefer plyometric activities of maximal total body effort in various activities like hops, jumps, and medicine ball throws. Plyometrics are far less risky way to fine-tune the nervous system for total body coordination and explosive power.

I think a lot of the evidence and "advantages" of Olympic weightlifting is more of a problem with program design. An Olympic lifting day for a basketball player may include one or two exercises with three to five sets of one to five reps. After warming up, the athlete is looking at a total of approximately 20 maximal total body efforts. But when fitness professionals and coaches design a plyometric training program, they prescribe various jumps, hops, and throws in sets of 20 to 50 or even 100 repetitions. Coaches have athletes run bleachers and do P90X. Jumping around for that many reps demands a lot of effort, but it's a far cry from from increasing an athletes peak power output.

2. There are better ways to gain size.

Just because the best fitness and weightlifting competitors are fairly big badass dudes does not imply that they got that way because of doing Olympic lifts. More likely, they became big and strong people who then spent plenty of time gaining neurological efficiency specific to those movements.

Muscle growth occurs from ripping your existing muscle fibers apart, which demands both heavy loading and a certain amount of time under tension. Contrast this with Olympic lifting, which necessitate lighter loads relative to any individual athlete. For example, everyone can deadlift (traditional lift) far more than they can power clean (Olympic lift).

Olympic lifting is far more about generating momentum in the most mechanically advantageous portion of the movement so as to apply during the more difficult phases of the movement. This looks and feels pretty cool. But the time under tension is minimal and it does relatively little to stress your muscles through a full range of motion with sufficient loading.

3. Time

Mastering form on these technical movements takes quite a while. With school and practice and games and family and social schedules, most athletes have a hard time learning proper form and technique of the basic squat and deadlift variations much less high speed Olympic lifts. With off season practices and travel clubs, most fitness professionals are lucky to get 2 solid months of training out of our athletes. That time can be better spent elsewhere.

Why are we seeing 130 lb athletes with profound weakness and/or mobility issues doing Olympic lifts with huge low density 10 pound bumper plates? Wouldn't it be a far better use of their time (and safer) to get them to, say, an easy set of 5 squats or deadlifts with 1.5 times their body weight? And no snatch grip anything until you can perform a fairly strict standing overhead press of your bodyweight.

While I'm on a rant let me also say that while high rep Olympic lifts are definitely taxing to the system, the far majority of athletes are nowhere near ready for high reps for the purpose of conditioning. Instead have them sprint up the hill or go to town on a rowing machine or push the car or perform high rep goblet squats or...

Fine tuning the computer "nervous" system of a Prius still leaves you with a Prius. Time would be better spent building the engine.

4. The Face Factor

I'm no stranger to missed lifts or strained muscles and joints. But the risk/benefit ratio of Olympic movements is just not there, especially when you really want to push your limits. The Olympic lifts require great strength, mobility, and coordination. That does NOT imply that the Olympic lifts are the best way to improve where these qualities are lacking. Far from it.

There are no other forms of exercise or sport that demand athletes to move very heavy and hard objects very quickly (again, outside of weightlifting and fitness competitions). The margin of error is rather small and the consequences relatively severe as compared to other forms of exercise.





Contrast this with traditional multijoint lifts, which employ the use of relatively greater loads but simply don't have the same face-driven-into-the-floor factor. Take, for example, something like barbell squats. You can tell when you're going to lose and/or miss a heavy squat. The intention to create an explosive lift is there. But since the load is so heavy, the movement is relatively low velocity and controlled.

5. Training = Rehab, Rehab = Training

It's rare to find a person who does not have some kind of musculoskeletal issue. It may be a slumped thoracic posture, a leg length discrepancy, or poor lumbar stability. It may be inflexible hips, weak glutes, or tight ankles. Olympic lifts will often mask various compensations. There is little room to identify, much less correct faulty positions and movement patterns. Traditional lifts and their variations usually allow for some degree of focused attention on your weakest link.

6. Gear

The Olympic lifts require bumper plates, space, and a favorable atmosphere. This is no huge thing, but go ahead and try throwing even the 3-pound purple dumbbells up overhead in your basement with light fixtures and 7 foot ceilings. Drop anything substantial at Planet Fitness, and you are about to be judged.

But yeah - pretty much any type of worthwhile exercise can go wrong. Like this squat that went wrong from start to finish:



 - - - - -

What say you? Keep in mind that I'm not claiming that you cannot gain size from Olympic weightlifting or that you cannot get injured by doing other exercises. Have you found the Olympic lifts to be unnecessary and mostly pointless? Or are they an essential key to unlocking your greatest everything?

you are what you eat [and do]

Unpacking the proverb.  

For year, nutritionists and trainers have explained that a person cannot achieve their health and fitness goals by exercise alone. "You can't out-train a poor diet." I stand by this advice, and I've said it myself. A 30-minute run burns approximately 300 calories above and beyond resting metabolic rate. Most people can take in that many calories in 5 seconds. (Well, I can). Hey, lay off my eating etiquette! The point is that exercise to merely burn calories is a tedious means of achieving energy balance.

Dismounting the dieting/treadmill...treadmill.

There's definitely more to the story of how you look, feel, and function. What we eat will always be relevant, but it's not the bottom line. Exercise is important, and overall lifestyle even more so.

[runs away, screaming in terror]

So many of us are ultra particular about what we will and will not eat. Of course there's the gluten thing, which kind of ruins it for people who really do have celiac disease. I've recently heard intelligent people describing how non-organic apples are pure poison and having a little chocolate wrecks the immune system. Does everyone believe they are the exception to the basic tenets of human physiology? By definition, this cannot be the case.




How refreshing would it be to hear someone say "I'm not having cake right now because I already had a huge cheeseburger and some fruit salad. But really, right now I'm just trying not to be a hog?"But instead, we are far more likely to get "Take these non gluten free croutons off my organic non-GMO free range chef salad because, yeah, I can't eat those."

I wish people would quit kidding themselves. Don't tell me that you never go home and pound the m&ms. You could have, well, pretty much anything if you ate it less frequently and in reasonable amounts. I've seen what happens when an individual musters enough willpower to follow the diet and their metabolism crashes and they look and feel deflated. We pound the m&ms. And then, well of course - we need a more strict diet!

I think we are asking too much of our diets.

We place far too little value and effort in a common-sense approach to eating, and far too much emphasis on -our- particular diets. Most of these particular/fundamentalist diets have no legitimate research behind them and their rules are over-rated. But do you know what's under-rated? Not eating the whole bag. Eating your fill and holding off on desert most of the time. Getting enough sleep. Turning your attention to something productive when you're bored in front of the TV. 

The NKYCS (No Kidding Yourself Common Sense) diet is sufficient for those who are reasonably active and carry some muscle on their frame. Eat fruit, vegetables, lean meats/proteins, and minimally-processed foods most of the time. Eat what you need 80 or 90% of the time and a reasonable amount of what you want 10 or 20% of the time. The everday readily available foods can be healthy if we use a little forethought. 

Why is such common sense advice and follow-through insufficient? One of the reasons, I believe, is because we have it too good.

Options

We have so many options. After all, in America the poorest among us are not starving, but obese. Instead of using common sense and following through when it's challenging, we become diet Pharisees. We find or make rules to lean on when we don't want to think for ourselves. Rules to narrow our options. We look to ever compounding minutia that will deliver us to the health and fitness Promised Land, staring right past our freedoms and blessings and a million and one other more important things.

Comfort

Most of us take rather drastic measures to achieve comfort. Have you stopped to consider the typical grocery store and gym? What I witness at the Giant grocery store and Golds Gym is not typical of the human experience. So many of the foods, gadgets, machinery, and exercise programs are an attempt to achieve health and fitness without getting too uncomfortable. Comfort is king and we have lost perspective.

You sit on this behemoth so you can straighten your elbows.

The thing we're most lacking is not some perfect "Eat this" and "Don't eat that." The missing ingredient is simply making formal and informal physical activity a priority in our busy schedules. And what if we could add a willingness to gradually get acquainted with discomfort? This is not a call to injury, but to pushing through the inertia that got us where we are, to carefully increasing the intensity in all it's forms, to confronting weaknesses instead of doing what comes easy.

Informal activity

Informal activity is the movement behind life. You enjoy hiking or gardening or serving others or chasing your kids or playing softball or whatever you get lost in.  Calories are burnt, for sure, but this is not the primary point. The point is living life, and getting yourself busy with something productive or enjoyable. This could be just about anything that does not involve sitting on the couch or at a desk.

Formal exercise

Some people enjoy limited amounts of formal exercise, but please understand that the point is not enjoyment or merely burning energy. This is where you work on specific impairments in movement quality. Two or three times per week you emphasize building strength, balance, and coordination. Adding muscle is not just for middle school football players. Muscle keeps you functioning well and moving in life. Muscle on the frame increases energy expenditure around the clock and stops the cycle of more exercise and more dieting rules needed to maintain energy balance.

Formal exercise should not look like hours on the elliptical or sitting on various exercise machines. Whether or not you enjoy walking and running, exercise should include more than straight ahead "cardio."

In conclusion

It's a shame that the NKYCS diet would not sell. Asking people to shift their priorities, to get busy and be uncomfortable is also unlikely to be well received. I'm sure the next big diet will be sciency, flashy, and new. There will be a physique, realistic but with just enough digital alteration to promote discontentment. Add an exercise contraption, a sense of urgency, and dash of fear to complete the winning formula.

And remember that I'm no dietician or chemist. I'm just a physical therapy guy who will readily admit that ANY activity, even walking three hours per day or driving to the huge temperature controlled environment to sit on a tricep extension machine, is likely better than nothing at all.

- - - - -

You have heard that it was said long ago, "You cannot out-exercise a poor diet." But I say that you should not diet at all; neither by calorie counting, for this is unnecessary tedium; nor out of fear, for some form of hatred quickly follows; nor by an appeal to the past, for the blessings and curses of the present are inevitable.

Instead, seek common sense, self discipline, and gratitude. Use your time and abilities wisely. And stay strong.


a

The Other Testimonial

I have mixed feelings about the patient testimonials that you see everywhere. Well here's one testimonial that you never see allied health professionals listing on their marketing materials.


"This is not helping."


Read more here at The High Calling.