50kg pullup program

Strength training is one of the easiest sports to play. It’s highly repetitive, has no entrance level and super low injury risk. That makes it such a great sport for a broad audience. If you show up frequently to the gym and train hard, you are already doing 90% of what it takes. This document should show you how to systemize your approach to get the last 10%. To achieve the goal of a 50kg pull up, there are 100 different ways available. This document shows you one possible way you can use. When I started, I wished I had an outline to know what to do next on which level. So I decided to provide you with one for free. This blueprint will provide you with three training phases to unlock a 50kg pull up.

Phase 1 - 10 Reps

Phase 1 is designed to learn and understand the pull up movement. It should give you a solid foundation to peak your strength from in the later phases.

Goal

Build up your rep foundation to 10 bodyweight reps. 10 Reps will put you into a good position to start a weighted calisthenics cycle afterwards as the foundation will be big enough to allow progressive increments of the additional weight without hitting a plateau quickly. This is not a necessary number to start with extra load. It’s just the one used in this system.

Frequency

Your pull up training should be done 2x a week with 48-72h of rest or only lower body training in between. Interferences from lower body or push training can never be fully avoided. To minimize the effect, avoid heavier deadlifting/hinging up to 48h before the pull workout. A good approach would be an upper/lower split. This minimizes the interference and allows you to recover well. Note, that if you do upper days a sore chest and triceps will harm your pull up performance. So best start with your pull ups and then alternate pull and push exercises.

Exercises

In Phase 1 it is best to keep things simple and specific. You don’t need any fluff or fancy assistance. The main goal is to get better at pull ups, so the main lift of both pull ups sessions are pull ups. There will be no variations in Phase 1.

The Assistance 1 is designed to:

1. Teach you a proper shoulder extension movement
2. Giving your lat additional stimulus without another limiting factor
3. improve grip strength and your body alignment with hanging core work to (better overhead mobility and a better stacked pelvis and ribcage)

The Assistance 2 is designed to:

1. Improve your shoulder external rotation, extension and supination
2. Improve your elbow and shoulder stability by targeting the biceps in different shoulder angles → these angles will adapted in Phase 2

The Warm Up is designed to:

1. Learn to reach overhead without arching through the spine (trap 3 raise)
2. Warm Up and mobilize shoulder extension and it’s prime movers (SA Shoulder Extension rows)
3. Improve and warm up your shoulder internal rotation (SA 45° Triceps Extensions)

Pull Up Sets excluding warm ups and assistance:

Rowing Sets excluding warm ups and assistance:

Biceps Curl Sets and Core Sets per Session:

The Training Scheme Day 1

Set 1: As Many Reps as possible until you have one rep left in reserve (failure point: chin over bar)

→ Minimum Reps: 5 (if you can do 5 pull ups with 1 rep in reserve, so 6 pull ups max, use the lightest possible resistance band to fulfil rep goals for the first and ongoing sets)

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• Set 1 reduced by 2 reps if Set 1 is 6 reps or lower
• Set 1 reduced by 3 reps if set 1 is 7 reps or higher

Examples for different athletes

Main Lift Progression - Rep Progression:
Increase your set 1 by at least one rep per week. It should be possible to increase your rep count on a weekly basis. In phases with more stress, increasing it only every second week is totally normal and fine. If you can’t increase it at least every 2 weeks in this phase, your stress management and or nutrition is the problem and not the training itself.

The Training Scheme Day 2

On day 2 you repeat the reps you did in backoff sets of day 1 for the matching number of sets as described in table 2. This will make sure that you get a good amount of practice without overloading yourself too much. The goal is to stay in the rhythm without training so much that your next day 1 feels off because of too much fatigue. This will be guaranteed as you train all sets with around 2-3 reps left in reserve on day 2.

Set Progression for Pull Up Beginners

If you haven’t trained pull ups frequently it is not recommended to start right away with a high number of sets. A good method to reduce the likelihood of overloading injury from doing too much too soon is a simple introduction block where you build up to your recommended volume. A 4 week period should be sufficient in most cases. So start in week one with your weekly pull up volume minus 3 sets. In week 2 minus 2 sets, in week 3 minus 1 set and week 4 with the recommended volume which you stay at for the whole phase 1.

How to progress Assistance 1 and 2

For all assistance exercises done with machines or dumbbells a double progression will be used. The recommended rep range is 8-10. Here is how it works.

Step 1) Find your working weight
If you haven’t done an exercise, it’s very hard to know a weight you can move for 8-10 reps. So what you need to do is trial and error. This means the first time you do it, work your way up on the stack. Increase the weight set by set until you have a rough idea of how much weight you need to move to end up with 8 reps close to failure.

Step 2) Progress the reps, then the weight
Session by session, you try to beat the last session’s reps. Once you hit 10 reps for all sets, you increase the weight by the smallest increment and start over. All assistance exercises can be trained until failure. Failure in this case will be defined as not being able to move the weight anymore with an acceptable form.

Transition to Phase 2

Once you hit 10 reps on your Day 1’s top set, you are good to start with Phase 2.

Phase 2 - 25kg x 6 Reps

In this phase, we will focus on adding additional weight. Since you are new to additional weights, we will use an unaggressive loading strategy that allows you to progress steadily without losing clean form and low risk of overloading injuries. You are able to do 10 clean bodyweight pull ups. This also means that, depending on your bodyweight, your estimated one rep max should sit around 20-25kg. Estimated means you are not necessarily able to pull it yet, but the potential to do so is in your body. This means you are almost halfway there! In Phase 2 you will train in moderate rep ranges. At this stage, low reps are not necessary to build the foundation. This does not mean they are wrong or bad, the risk to reward ratio might just not be in favor of reward for most of the athletes.

Goal

Build up 6-8 reps with 25kg additional weight. Having 6-8 reps with 25kg will, depending on your bodyweight, give you the potential to pull 50kg (or close to) for a one rep max. After Phase 1, the training volume will be minimally increased as your passive structures should be adapted and are ready to tolerate some more work, increasing your training outcome. Note, that this is not a linear process.

Frequency

In Phase 2 you will stick to two pulling sessions per week like in Phase 1. All recommendations to organize the training will stay the same.

Exercises

In Phase 2 the main lift is now the weighted pull up. On day 2, next to a weighted top set switch over to a modified version of the bodyweight pull up for the backoff sets. You will add a pause for 1-2 counts at around 90° elbow flexion (roughly forehead at bar height). This is the phase of the pull up, where athletes tend to have the biggest distance to the bar and initiate the closing phase of the pull up where they start to pull their chin horizontally toward the bar. To improve the movement awareness and positioning in this phase of the pull up and to learn not to rely only on the acceleration of the earlier phases, this is a great variation for this phase. Using a different one or no variation at all will also work - it’s just a different way. The warm up stays consistent.

The Assistance 1 is designed to

1. Improve shoulder extension from higher degrees of shoulder flexion
2. Giving your lat additional stimulus without another limiting factor
3. Giving your upper back additional stimulus without another limiting factor

The Assistance 2 is designed to

3. Improve your shoulder external rotation, supination, and scapular upward rotation
4. Improve your elbow and shoulder stability by targeting the biceps in different shoulder angles → we move to higher degrees of shoulder flexion/abduction in this phase
5. improve grip strength and your body alignment with hanging core work (better overhead mobility and a better stacked pelvis and ribcage) → progress with leg position and more hip flexion
6. If you think you can tolerate and benefit from more biceps volume, you can keep the preacher curl in the rotation for 1-3 sets on day 2.

Pull Up Sets excluding warm ups and assistance:

Rowing Sets excluding warm ups and assistance:

Biceps Curl Sets and Core Sets per Session:

Equipment

This is the first phase where you really need equipment for your pull ups. Congratulations, you unlocked a new feature - the weighted belt.

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The Training Scheme For Day 1

In this phase we will use an alternating progression for day 1’s. It works like this: every second week we will increase the weight and decrease by 1 rep, and every other week we increase by one rep and keep the weight constant.

Starting Weight: 2.5kg
Starting Reps: 5
Weight Increment: 1.25-2.5kg Weekly.

Here is an example on how it could look like if you are able to increase the weight weekly by 2.5kg. You would end phase 2 in 10 weeks. (W - Week / D-Day)

W1D1: 5x2.5kg, 3-4x5x0kg → W1D2: 6x2.5kg, 2-3x6 paused at 90°
W2D1: 5x5kg, 3-4x5x0-2.5kg → W2D2: 6x5kg, 2-3x6 paused at 90°
W3D1: 5x7.5kg, 3-4x5x2.5-5kg→ W3D2: 6x7.5kg, 2-3x6 paused at 90°
W4D1: 5x10kg, 3-4x5-7.5kg → W4D2: 6x10kg, 2-3x6 paused at 90°

W5D1: 5x12.5kg, 3-4x7.5-10kg → W5D2: 6x12.5kg, 2-3x6x5kg paused at 90°
W6D1: 5x15kg, 3-4x10-12.5kg → W6D2: 6x15kg, 2-3x6x5kg paused at 90°
W7D1: 5x17.5kg, 3-4x12.5-15kg → W7D2: 6x17.5kg, 2-3x6x5kg paused at 90°
W8D1: 5x20kg, 3-4x15-17.5kg → W8D2: 6x20kg, 2-3x6 pausedx5kg at 90°

W9D1: 5x22.5kg, 3-4x17.5-20kg → W9D2: 6x22.5kg, 2-3x6x10kg paused at 90°
W10D1: 5x25kg, 3-4x20-22.5kg → W10D2: 6x25kg, 2-3x6x10kg paused at 90°

Of course, not everyone will be able to add 2.5kg weekly. If the pace is too fast, and you lose your technique or you are not able to complete your reps, repeat the last week where you were able to hit reps with proper form and then only use 1.25kg increments from there. Especially in stressful times, or times it’s ok to progress slow or stall shortly. At this stage, you should still be able to progress weekly though. (Excluding unplanned setbacks from sickness or holidays or injuries).

For day 1, we will add a small load drop to keep the proximity to failure a bit lower for the backoffs. After the first set, you will drop the weight by 2.5kg up to 5kg later when needed with increasing loads in the top set. Just drop the load ones for all backoff sets.

At the start, it’s the easiest though to keep day 2 pulls backoffs constant within a training block and increase it blockwise. In this example this would be every 4 weeks. If you are repeating the Phase 2 again later on a more advanced level, feel free to load to the pull ups w/ 90° hold around 15-20% lower as the backoff sets on day 1. The progression for Assistance 1 and 2 stay equally to phase 1.

Transition to Phase 3

Once you hit 6 reps with 25kg on your Day 1’s top set with 1 or even better around 2 reps left in the tank, you are good to start with Phase 3, as this would equal 7-8 reps with 50kg and so an estimated one rep max of close to 50kg.

Phase 3 - Peaking for 50kg x 1

In this phase, we try to slowly adapt our body towards higher loads and lower rep ranges resulting hopefully in a strong 50kg x 1 single. Therefore, we will increase the specificity of our training towards strength week by week. Day 1 - which will now be called the primary day, will be used as the heavy and specific session. Day 2 - which will now be called the secondary session - will be used for more moderate work, but still will have heavy elements.

Goal

As already explained, the main goal is to hit a heavy single with 50kg - or as close as possible depending on the daily condition you have during the testing.

Frequency

In Phase 3 you will stick to two pulling sessions per week like in Phase 1 and 2. All recommendations to organize the training will stay the same.

Exercises

In Phase 3, which is a peaking phase, we use the same lifts as in Phase 2. The main differences are the rep ranges and that all sets are weighted. Also the assistance stays the same. In a peaking phase, we want to know the effect of every exercise on the body. That is why we keep everything as close as possible to Phase two when it comes to assistance volume and exercises. With this we can make sure our body is used to the stress and we know perfectly well how to manage the fatigue.

The Training Scheme

Phase 3 is the only phase that does not have an ongoing scheme that you can progress as long as you need to. It is a fixed 8 week schedule. This means in order to be successful in Phase 3, those 8 weeks should be trained in a period of your life where you can make sure that the interferences with your training are as little as possible. It is important to stick to the submaximal approach and not to get greedy in the first weeks of the phase. The goal is to hit a heavy single in week 8, not to hit personal records in the weeks before. Depending on the outcome of Phase 2, orientate yourself on the higher or lower weight range. If 6x25kg was heavy for you, use the lower border, if it was RIR2 or higher for you, use the upper border.

After training through all three phases you should now be able to pull around 50kg for a one rep max. The system can also be applied in a similar fashion for other weighted calisthenics lifts like dips. The load drops, volume and assistance exercise might vary depending on your level, other training priorities and goals.

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