 Welcome back to the School of Calisthenics. It's Tim and Lani, one on how to do your first pull-up. So the first exercise we're going to have a look at is the active hanging. This forms a foundation for all of our pulling movements and particularly getting your first pull-up. So Lani's going to jump up on the bar. This is a real simple exercise. It doesn't look like you're doing a lot but you actually see there's a load of work going on in the shoulders which is going to help to create that stability. So you can see Lani's dropped into a dead hang here so all we've got is the tension out of the shoulders. She's just hanging in there into a loose position. The job then is to pull the shoulders down and just watch the arms stay straight but the ears and the head move upwards and what we're doing in that position is drawing the shoulder blades closer together pulling them down and creating a load of stability around the back of the shoulders. Jump down Lani, spin around and see it from the back. So she's just going to jump up. You can see here what we're trying to do is get these guys in closer together loads of activation there. That provides a basic foundation strength for the active hang. Perfect. So one of the things to be mindful of when you're doing active hang is to not bend the elbow. So you can see Lani's in a dead hang position. She pulls up and the vertical height has been achieved from the elbow bending not from the scaps pulling back in together. So if we see a really nice rep again now she keeps her arms straight, squeezes shoulder blades back and down together and that's where we get the vertical pulling position from. So the second thing we're looking to avoid is to not arch the low back and feel like we're twisting the rib cage upwards. So you can see Lani there's pulling up. We've got a back arch. We've lost control of the core. So when she goes back into a good position just look at how she keeps the midsection tight. She's holding everything in a nice straight line. That's so important for starting to transfer force effectively from the shoulders into the rest of the body. Right so if you can incorporate the active hang into your training program either in your warm-up or at the end of your program for 30 second hold then it's perfect. You stabilize your shoulder blades and you're on the way to doing your first pull-up. Not only your first pull-up but any calisthenic movement. Stage two of working towards your pull-up is going to be the bodyweight row. Now this is a horizontal pulling exercise and we know that in a pull-up we look into pull vertically but it's just a great capacity strength exercise for the back to start to train those pulling muscles and we get a great opportunity to integrate the active hang from before and also link in some of that core strength. So I'm going to get line to jump on the rings. You can do this on a bar as well. Real simple, we can just straighten the legs out and then she's just going to drop into this pulling position. She's going to go through that same active hang so she's going to pull the shoulder blades in together keeping the tummy tight and then she's going to squeeze the elbows down by the side of the body making sure she gets a nice full position. So looking to get hands to the chest, squeezing the scaps together at the top of that movement and then she lowers down beautifully under control. If she wants to make it a little bit more difficult she can slide her feet forwards and we just increase that body angle and then again she pulls through keeping midsection tight, shoulders in a great position at the top and then lowering back down under control. If it's too difficult move the feet back and we can move through some various different progressions making sure you can train a level that you need to and that is the body weight row. Step number three is the ring reverse fire. Now this is a great exercise for a number of different reasons. One being it adds a load of road shoulder robustness we get some great retraction of the shoulder blades we're also working the posterior delt so we're building up some just great foundation strength for our pull-up but it's also really good at keeping some postural balance and making sure the shoulders stay healthy if we're working towards a pull-up which can take its toll because it starts to want to ram the shoulders off. I love this exercise and Lani is going to give us a quick demo. So real simple she just takes the rings again very similar to the body weight row but this time we're going to need a slightly different body angle because it is more difficult we're not using as much pulling musculature we're relying purely on the shoulder blade retractors and the posterior delt and all she's going to do is keep the arms straight Tommy stays tight and then she pulls out into this reverse fly position we've got the opportunity to squeeze shoulder blades again in the back and then this is really where people go wrong is they fall down so I'm going to get Lani to come down super controlled lowering through the range so you've really decelerating that movement everything staying tight in the midsection again if it gets difficult you can move your feet back a little bit if you want to make it more difficult you can start them forward but a real nice easy finish you're showing a program put it at the end build some capacity strength up and get some bomb proof shoulders which are going to help you for your pull-ups the next two exercises we're going to use the band for assistance pull-ups are not easy and when I first started doing them I couldn't do one so having the band there for some help is perfect the exercise we're going to do now is eccentric banded lowers so Lani's got a box to stand on it can be a chair anything you want to use just to give you some height both feet go into the band to start off with then she's just going to jump up and catch yourself above the bar from the position above the bar all Lani's got to do now is lower down under control we're looking for five seconds to go from above the bar down to a full dead hang position all the band is doing is giving us a bit of support because this is actually trying to decelerate quite a lot of weight it's your own body weight so having the band just take some of that off when she hits that bottom position she's just going to drop down take her feet out re-step up onto the box and then she's just going to reload the band on the feet jump back up and repeat the movement you're aiming for three to five reps of these they're not easy so just take your time over them work that eccentric get the movement quality and decelerating force like this is going to start to improve the global capacity of this muscle strength so actually it's going to feed into the actual pulling movement even though you're only doing the lowering phase it's going to all contribute to getting that first pull up so once you've built up some strength and you're feeling confident it's time to move on to a pull up with some assistance so Lani's got her feet in the band she's in a dead hang position where we want to start all of our pull-ups from because it really builds strength which we can transfer into the movements so the first thing she's going to do is go through the active hang and pull the shoulder blades down and together keeps the tummy tight and then she starts the movement upwards she's pulling the elbows down to the side of the body nice and high try and get a pause at the top and then come down under control just like you did in the eccentric lowers drops back into dead hang out into active hang and then she goes for the second rep beautifully controlled keep the quality high and just do as many reps as you can do within the resistance without losing any form or control okay don't be embarrassed about using a band it's really important to ingrain the technique from the word go there's different strengths of bands so you can work your way down until all of a sudden you don't need one anymore so that's some great tips guys on how to get your first pull-up work through those stages spend time and make sure you're doing everything with great technique it does take some time to get your first pull-up right so don't it's not a two-week process you're gonna have to put a little bit of time in put a bit of skin in the game but there will be a day just like Lani and me when we did that first pull-up so if you're not subscribed already and you definitely need to do that you need to click up top we've got a free beginners diet guide down there which has got loads of other exercises to get started in calisthenics if you want some more tutorials from which you can click straight up there until next time class dismissed