Shoulder Blade Strength

The pull-up is one of the most desirable and difficult upper body strength manoeuvres to conquer. Especially if we aim for full range, full control and even tougher variations.

Work magic on your shoulders! Build a foundation of shoulder mobility and strength (after surgeries and years of sitting slouched). My vertical pulling is stronger than it ever was because of these simple and powerful motions.

By far, the most useful movement I've used to develop my pull-up strength, is hanging from a single bar. Yes, just hanging - right at the bottom of my range, full stretch.

Then, the first and potentially most important step in a pull-up is to have strength in the muscles that pull our shoulder blades down and backwards towards one another. Our shoulder blades are our arms' foundations, and many people don't appreciate how much pulling should happen from our upper back, through our massive lower & middle traps and lats.

Most of our pulling movements should be dominated by these larger torso muscles, whereas most people think of pulling as a bicep-dominant movement. And most people are already physically tighter and over-active in their biceps. Of course the biceps should get involved, but rather to transfer the forces from our upper back, not to create most of the force. This is a very common issue.

So - going just one step beyond a passive hanging position into an active hanging position, by pulling my shoulder blades down away from my ears and squeezing them back towards one another. And then relaxing back down into a passive hanging position again. And then repeating this. Again and again and again.

Give it a bash - let me know what you think.