Comfort or Challenge.............

On the topic of pull up bar thickness, it’s been fun searching other blogs and chat boards to “hear” what others have said, especially for those who have attempted to build their own. That trip to the hardware store, “hook up” with a local steel shop or conversation with a neighborhood plumber always seems to result in some confusion…before finding success ultimately.

First of all, like all industries I suppose, steel guys have their own language; standard pipe vs. mechanical pipe, hot rolled rounds vs. piping, tubes, flats, channels, etc. If you want to put your hands around a 1 ¼” bar, it’s a 1 inch pipe, 1” inch around your hands is a 3/4” pipe; go figure. Sizes vary depending on the actual material and the weight and thickness of the actual metal all varies too. Luckily, that’s why there are steel guys out there to worry this stuff so we don’t have to.

Putting all that aside, it would appear that there is general agreement that the thickness of choice for a standard pull up bar is just about 1 ¼” thick when measuring the outside diameter. This provides for a comfortable grip for the majority of athletes and satisfies the training needs of most in common situations. A trainer friend of mine jumped up on a new bar system just after we installed them and she said “ah, these are perfect”……….a reference to comfort I suppose.

For additional challenge however, one might opt for thicker bars. There is no question that thick bar pull up work will do wonders for your grip and forearm strength. Even thicker bars yet, may not be practical for everyday work outs, but they too have their place and strength benefits.

Take a look at the Thick bars (image included here) we recently installed at Balance Gym Thomas Circle in Washington. These bars are 2 ½” in diameter and are incorporated into a 20’ system that has both primary and secondary work areas. For the primary work area, the bar diameter is 1 ¼” but for the secondary work areas (monkey bars/pull up bars), they alternate between standard and the 2 ½” thick bar variety. Providing even more challenge in a completely different way is the super thick 4” pipe that we also installed at Balance. Designed as one component in a really cool raised obstacle course to swing across, a bar in the air is a bar in the air after all, and jumping up and attempting a pull up is fair game….this is NOT an easy pull up!

Often, we simply adapt to what we have available to us. Or, if you are like me, you find yourself pulling yourself up on just about anything that you come across that looks like it will hold. I had to contain myself this weekend heading downtown on the E train in NYC holding on to the overhead grab bars; they were just about 1 ¼” in diameter in my estimation, they were definitely comfortable….and clipping along at 50+ miles an hour on a crowded subway train would have been quite the challenge.

Comfort AND Challenge in this case!

The Perfect Pull Up

"In Pursuit of the Perfect Pull Up" is the stated mission of Steelfit. With that said, I got to thinking and determined it would only be fair if I defined the ground rules for the search. Would it ultimately lead to a pull up demonstrated with absolute perfect form? Would it lead us to the perfect pull up bar upon which to perform the exercise? If I asked for a definition from ten different people, would I get a consistent answer?

It did not take long to realize that the answer would differ each time I asked the question and to whom I was speaking. It was also clear that this was not going to be as easy as I first thought.

For me, five years ago, the perfect pull up was giving up the machine assisted variety and getting my chin over the bar on my own for the first time. For a competitive athlete like my friend Blair Morrison, the perfect pull up might be achieving success in a high volume workout of chest to bar pull ups on a thick bar. For others, its learning to do kipping pull ups and turning out 30 repetitions as fast as lightening with no rest. Still for others, it might be something altogether different. Clearly, my answer today would differ from 5 years ago and so likely would your response.

The Exercise Itself: Often overlooked for its awesome ability to build back, upper body and core strength, the pull up is really key for anyone serious about building strength. It's as pure as you can get and all you need is a bar, your body and the will.

As simple as they may seem, pull ups can be very intimidating for someone who doesn't have one yet though; it wasn't too long ago that I was right there. I recall when I was struggling to get 1 strict dead hang pull up and could only imagine the day when I could blast out 10 or more. What I learned quickly however, was the absolute best way to do more pull ups was to do more pull ups. Like anything you want bad enough (and particularly for me), practice, practice, practice and eventually it clicks.

To learn and improve, I personally included pull up attempts into my workouts regularly with the aim at building strength and improving performance. There is a ton of material out there about how to train for pull up performance and in addition to just doing more pull ups, there were several other things I practiced to eventually get better:

Developing the Pull Up:

1) Do more pull ups - repetitions improve performance

2) Doing negatives - starting at the "up" position, slowly lower yourself down

2) Assisted pull ups on a machine - resistance settings vary

3) Assisted pull ups with bands - attach bands to a bar and place feet or knees in bands and pull

4) Jumping pull ups

5) Lat pull downs - Machine exercise that closely resembles the pull up motion

Advanced Pull up Performance:

1) Do more pull ups - practice, practice and practice some more

2) Add weight; use a weighted vest or hang plates from a weight belt with a chain or hold dumbbells between your feet or thighs

3) Rope Climbs - a variety of rope climb variations all support upper body and back strength

4) Thick Bar Pull Ups - incredible for forearm and grip strength

5) Kipping - allows for increased "work" and achieving high repetitions

6) Vary hand grips for additional challenge

So the case can be made that the pull up is an awesome exercise and clearly there are things you can do when you are building the skill initially and even more you can practice to improve advanced performance.

So what exactly IS the perfect pull up?

Well, the answer is a personal one for all of us to consider and starts back at our first pull up attempted and continues with each new milestone achieved. It's for this reason that the journey searching for perfection will be so much fun to chronicle.

It's also for this reason that I have concluded that there are no ground rules in this pursuit!!

Why Steelfit?

There was a time when I thought that a good day in the gym meant working my way through a circuit of weight training equipment, doing 5 miles on a treadmill and dropping in some occasional free weights for affect.  Most of the workouts were either pulled out of magazines or were a series of other simple isolated muscle group exercises I patched together.

It was about three years ago that I was introduced to Crossfit  by friend and trainer Blair Morrison. Blair is a world class athlete and avid crossfit practioner.  Check out his blog at www.crossfitmobile.blogspot.com. Needless to say, after my inaugural "Filthy Fifty", I was hooked and wouldn't look at exercising the same way again.

While Crossfit and fitness overall has become  a passion and an integral part of my life, the ingenuity and creativity demonstrated by Blair and others like him is what inspired me to start Steelfit.  There were more than one occasion when we would be working out in the early morning in Washington DC and I would be introduced to  a new toy just acquired or proudly made by hand the day prior after a trip to the Home Depot; a giant slosh pipe, beer kegs for pressing/cleaning or a pair of parallettes made of PVC pipe.  This always got us talking about the endless possibilities for using all sorts of things for the purpose of adding interest and challenge to a work out.

It wasn't long before I was ready to test my own sense of inventiveness.  When the topic of conversation became the "lame" wall mounted pull up bar in our gym (too close to the wall to kip) or the only other options that were incorporated into a rack system, the mission seemed obvious.  With a brother in the steel fabrication business (and the ability to build just about anything I could dream up), Steelfit was born along with a 12 foot, multiple station, varying grip, group pull up bar.  The combination of my passion for fitness and my partners expertise in steel started us down a path that resulted in the formation of Steelfit Strength Systems LLC.

As I travel, I try to check out boxes whenever I can and am always impressed with the ingenuity and creativity demonstrated in putting them together. While there are plenty of standard products out there, I love checking out the "bars" to see what the local guys have built.

The purpose of this blog is to share ideas as a live "laboratory"  or focus group of sorts.  I will post images  of new designs we have created and show previews of some of the custom pull up bar systems and other gym build outs we are working on.  If you have seen something cool or have been thinking about a way to improve a current piece of equipment, share it. 

The only limit we have is our imagination !!!