Pullup and Palms

[IndianNinja]

After attempting to increase my pullup max for a long time, I have made a "painfull" observation. Here is how it feels like.

I have wrapped a bicycle (rubber) tube around my pull up bar for grip. I noted that after sometime my palms hurt, because of the stretch/pull of the skin on my palm. Actually the grip is too good that my skin sticks to the bar (rubber covered). More than my back muscles failing, its my palm skin thats failing.

I dont know how the pullup bars are for others. Can everyone share your experinces ?

Any tips on getting rid of this obstacle will be really helpful.

In

Hi Ninja,
this is what I have learned long time ago.
Make sure that the bar is right between your palm and fingers.
You know where the knuckles are. Well they are on the outside and you use the same on the inside of the hand. Keep it there, it helps like that.

My coach told me that it's a matter of relaxed grip vs tight grip.
If you have relaxed grip- it will slide and hurt your skin.
If you have a tight grip on the bar it will not slide.
First get a comfortable grip and than squeez tight, you'll see it helps with sliding.

This reminds me of the argument I heard a while back.
A few pull up guys were talking.
One was arguing that you need to have sand or chalk on your hands for better grip. And the other was saying that you need oil on your hands to protect from friction.
I think that has to do with the structure of the skin on your hands. Also the bar. Thinner bar will slide less, it's easier to grip but it hurts the hand.
Thicker bar is hard to grip, but less pressure on the fingers.
So I would not use lubricant on the really thick bar.
About the padding, it does help. You just have to get the right one.
See what they have on some pull up bars. Some of them if you buy them at the sports store, come with this soft grip. Maybe you can find something like that somewhere.

[koltz]

pulling anything will get your grip in problems , you should tighten it for starters ,
and to improove it use grippers and try to close them , doing weighted hangs and towel pullups help the grip a lot too

I don't think IN has holding on to the grip problem. It' more like skin comming off ?

[koltz]

If it's the skin just use gloves for pulups (although they make the grip even harder because now it's a fatter grip)
I use them for polyometric chin/pullup alternations (a blast for the chinning muscules )

If it's the skin just use gloves for pulups (although they make the grip even harder because now it's a fatter grip)
I use them for polyometric chin/pullup alternations (a blast for the chinning muscules )

Koltz, can you do a muscle up?
IF you do ply-pull ups I figured you should be abel to do a muscle up.

[koltz]

I think I can, problem is my pullup bar is a dorbar which doesn't let you do muscle ups , I will try it in one of thoose bars in the parks and tell you...

by the way are handstand pushups with 70% ROM (arms on books) when you can bump in a wall once a while much easier then freestanding , because It's a high level move with tons of stuff I acn't do yet but I manaeg to do 12+ of them with ease strength wise

Waiting on your muscle up experiment, Koltz.

[koltz]

I will try it today on the rack in my gym , I always wanted to impress the peeps there with one arm pullups but I can't get a solid one yet a muscleup will be sure to impress all thoose dudes working on the gravitron for chins :)

[jb21]

I have tried the plyo pullup..I can get a few, but they are definitely awesome!
Cant get a muscle up....I think its a technique thing because I can get 20 straight pullups and over twice that in dips.
Any tips?
(koltz, I just started working on 1 arm pull/chin up-let me know what you are dong to progress).

[koltz]

oh I'm progressing great on the one arm chin , also I tried the muscle up I didn't get it , maybe my dipping strength is too weak(I can do over 30 full propper dips though)

anyhow for the one arm chin I never really trained in an organized way , just a few sets throughout the day if I'm not sore...
at the moment I can hold it isometrically for about 10 secunds and another 3-4 secunds eccentrically(negetive part..) , when I tried it my back was freaking sore too so I guess when it recovers fully I'd progress even more,

Some stuff I did to train for it:
isometric pullup holds (frenchies)
GTG in the early stages to get like 20 reps on regualr pulups and more
Ply alternating grip pullups ( sort of half assed because my pullup bar is a dorbar and I kept hitting my elbows )
also on the early stage did some alternating grips from a hanging position to build up my weak grip( was weak :P)
fingertip assisted one arm pullups
uneven pullups recently untill now (I had to use a freaking pair of pants instead of a towel because it was too short \ easy )
assisted one arm pullups with a small jump (not sore if it worked maybe it was the thign that got me tendonis in my right arm)
standing on a scale and pulling myself up for 30 secunds trying to hold 85% of my weight up , eventually got a dumbell in my other arm
front lever progression ( I have a solid straddle FL now and semi solid full FL)
and a lot of other stuff maybe I don't remember...

I used singles , triples , 5's or 12's for reps depending on the excersise.

If you do one or two pull ups per set in many sets. Your grip will get stronger without pain. Than it will not slide. Try it.

Strengthen the supporting grip. Everything with pull ups will than fall into place.

[koltz]

I think some mean pullup dropsets till absolute exahustion could help...
I'm talking about Doing one arm chin holds then front lever holds then weighted pullups then chins then side to side pullups frenchies normal pullups normal chins holds jumping holds chin holds vertical rows dumbell rows then some band work for the last of it......... then try to do some mroe holds..... if anyone had the guts to do something like this he hsould fry his back compleately

[Celcius]

Think of the coat hanger, guys.
It keeps hanging on the rod, because the metal stays bend. The hanger doesn't slide off as long as the half circle is bend. If the half bend part of the hanger will give, it will slide.
So if you fingers form strong hooks, there will not be much sliding, thus not much friction on the skin.