Get Ripped with Pull ups

Can you get ripped with pull ups?



You most definitely can get ripped with pull ups. Pull ups alone, however, won’t be enough to build your leanest and meanest body.

While pull ups are an excellent exercise for complete upper body strength and development, you need a balanced full body program..



You also need to pay meticulous attention to your nutrition and recovery to allow your body to carry as much muscle and as little fat as possible.

In this article I will outline what pull ups can do for you, and what they can’t do for you. That way, you will be able to use pull ups as a tool to build your best body.

Get Ripped with Pull ups: What can pull ups do for you?

Pull ups are still an excellent article and they offer a lot of benefits.

Muscle Growth

Pull ups and their variations build the lats and biceps, rhomboids, posterior shoulder muscles, forearms, and traps. Pull ups provide the greatest training effect for the lats and biceps. 

If you do the same pull up scheme month after month, you will eventually plateau.

You will still need to challenge yourself and increase your training volume to grow bigger muscles.

This means progressively adding weight, reps, sets, time under tension, or increasing your training frequency in the pull up.

If you do this correctly and over a long enough time period, you will find that you gain muscle. You will grow your back, forearms and biceps.

The pull up won’t build your other muscles however. You will need a full body program to do that.

Reduce Body Fat

Doing enough pull ups can improve your body fat percentage.

Even if you maintain the same body weight, you will look leaner because you have more muscle on your frame. Your body has used some of its fat stores to build muscle mass. This means your overall body fat percentage has dropped.

If you only do pull ups, you won’t achieve a very drastic improvement in your body composition, however. You need to do full body strength exercises in addition to your pull up routine, and monitor your diet very closely. This will help you build the most muscle all over your body–while using  your fat stores to fuel that muscle growth.

Pull ups alone aren’t enough

Pull ups are part of a fully comprehensive training program–they are not the only ingredient.

This means you will need to do other exercises to achieve your leanest and most impressive physique.

You will need a full body program focused around the following movement patterns:

1.Upper Body Vertical Pull: Pull ups, Chin ups, Wide Grip Pull ups, Pause Chin ups, Eccentric Pull ups, Banded Pull ups, etc. 

2. Upper Body Vertical Push: Overhead Press, Kettlebell One Arm Overhead Press, Handstand Push up, Trap Bar Overhead Press

3. Upper Body Horizontal Pull: Pendlay Row, Bent Over Dumbbell Row, Bent over Barbell Row, Chest Supported Seal Row

4. Upper Body Horizontal Push: Weighted Push up, Barbell Bench Press, DB Bench Press

5. Lower Body Bilateral Push: Barbell Back Squat, Barbell Front Squat, Hack Squat, Leg Press

6. Lower Body Bilateral Pull: Romanian Deadlift, Conventional Deadlift, Stiff Legged Deadlift

7. Lower Body Unilateral Push: Dumbbell Walking Lunge, Bulgarian Split Squat, Split Squat, Step up

8. Lower Body Unilateral Pull: Single Leg Romanian Deadlift, Stiff Legged Single Leg Deadlift

9. Core Stabilization, Anti-Extension: Barbell Roll Out, TRX Roll Out, Plank

10. Core Stabilization, Anti-Rotation: Pallof Press

Example Training Programs

Monday: Lower Body Body Bilateral Push of Choice 3 x 6-8

Lower Body Bilateral Pull of Choice 3 x 6-8

Upper Body Horizontal Push of Choice 3 x 8-10

Upper Body Horizontal Pull of Choice 3 x 8-10

Core Stabilization, Anti Extension of Choice 3 x 12

Tuesday: Lower Body Body Unilateral Push of Choice 3 x 8-10

Lower Body Unilateral Pull of Choice 3 x 8-10

Upper Body Vertical Push of Choice 3 x 8-10

Upper Body Vertical Pull of Choice 3 x 8-10

Core Stabilization, Anti Rotation of Choice 3 x 6-8

Thursday: A different Lower Body Body Bilateral Push 3 x 12-15

Lower Body Bilateral Pull  3 x 8-10

Upper Body Horizontal Push 3 x 12

Upper Body Horizontal Pull 3 x 12

Core Stabilization, Anti Extension of Choice 3 x 12

Saturday: Lower Body Body Unilateral Push of Choice 3 x 12-15

Lower Body Unilateral Pull of Choice 3 x 12-15

Upper Body Vertical Push of Choice 3 x 12

Upper Body Vertical Pull of Choice 3 x 12-15

Core Stabilization, Anti Rotation of Choice 3 x 10-12

Diet

You have heard it before and you are going to hear it again. Pull ups–and any other exercise–cannot outdo a bad diet.

Your diet and nutrition is going to play the biggest factor in achieving a ripped and athletic physique.

If you are currently above your target body fat percentage, no amount of pull ups is going to make you much leaner. You will need to change your diet to do that.

Calorie Deficit

To lose fat, you will need a caloric deficit. No amount of “clean eating,” “Paleo-eating,” healthy eating or ketogenic meals will cause you to lose body fat unless you are in a calorie deficit. You need to eat less than you burn.

“Just eating less” is a poor method of weight loss for most people, because most people have no idea how many calories they are really consuming.

Calculate your weight loss calories and then track your calories meticulously using a web based app like MyFitnessPal.

For most people, 10-13 calories per pound of bodyweight is a good place to start. Very overweight individuals might need to eat 8-10 calories per pound of bodyweight to lose weight.

Leaner individuals will need to approach fat loss slower to prevent muscle loss. Start at 11-14 calories per pound of bodyweight.

And very lean people should eat at caloric maintenance or a small surplus, or 14-18 calories per pound of bodyweight. If this is you, you should focus on eating enough and using your weight training program to get stronger and more muscular.

Protein:

It is extremely important that you get enough protein during your fat loss phase so you can give your body the building blocks for muscle growth and prevent muscle loss during your dieting phases.

Eat about 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass.

Fats:

You can reduce your fat consumption to about .3 grams per pound of bodyweight, or roughly 20-25 percent of your calories. Quality fats–those found in olive oil, avocado, nuts, seeds– will help regulate hormone production and improve recovery from your training.

Carbs:

The rest of your calories should come from carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are extremely important for maintaining intense training sessions. Generally, I recommend keeping protein constant, and cutting fat before you cut carbohydrates. Carbs are the training fuel! Aim to fill up on mostly whole, unprocessed carbs like fruit, whole grains, and vegetables. Make sure you eat carbs before and after your workouts to provide energy for intense activity.

Is Cardio Necessary? 

Cardio is a tool in the toolbox for getting ripped. You can get ripped without cardio, as long as your nutrition is on point and you are in a caloric deficit.

Cardio can make getting ripped a little easier by increasing the number of calories you burn daily and allowing you to eat a bit more. Burning between 600-1000 calories per week can help increase the size of your deficit. Cardio can also help you feel a bit better and recover a bit more quickly from your weight training, as well as strengthen your heart.

Aim to perform cardio 2-3 times weekly for 30-60 minutes, with your heart rate between 120-150 beats per minute.

Cardio should never take precedence over your weight training–weight training is most important for building and maintaining muscle. Don’t go crazy with the cardio. Let it serve as an adjunct, not as your primary training method.

Sleep and Recovery

Getting adequate sleep and recovery is one of the most important, yet overlooked, factors to achieving a ripped physique. Sleeping enough will help you recover from your training and build more muscle.

Sleeping enough will also improve your calorie partitioning, meaning more of the energy you eat will go towards building muscle instead of being stored as fat.

Finally, sleeping enough will give you the energy and mental focus to train hard and make progress in the gym, which will ultimately help improve your physique.

Putting it All Together

Pull ups can indeed be a part of achieving a ripped physique, but they are not the only factor.

You should include pull ups in a full body, progressive strength program and manage your nutrition to get lean and muscular. You might also want to add in some cardio to help speed things along. If you do everything I outlined here, you should be able to achieve your most muscular and most ripped physique possible.