Exercising with a pull-up bar is an activity that requires perseverance and endurance. Indeed, it requires a minimum of strength because, contrary to the high pulley pull-up that you can easily find in a gym or in a sports hall, and for which you can choose the weight in adequacy with your strength, with the pull-up bar, you have to pull your whole weight. This increases the width of the back with the wide grip pull-ups.
It looks difficult at first, but it gets easier the more you practice! Every beginner sportsman and/or athlete has been there. Many have practiced their first exercises with difficulty, often with the help of a partner holding their ankles to lighten them up.
With patience and perseverance, a beginner athlete can perform two repetitions at full range of motion, i. e. a "near full extension and flexion" movement. Gradually, he or she can increase to four, then eight, then ten, until perhaps defining his or her own number of exercises once the body is broken in.
How to perform a wide grip pull-up?
Performing a wide grip pull-up is tricky. To perform a wide grip pull-up, you need to grip a high bar with your hands in pronation and let yourself hang without necessarily having your arms fully extended. Try to keep the tension on your back rather than shifting it to the elbow joint. The execution is divided into three steps.
The first step is a shoulder width grip. Then you have to pull yourself up until your chin is at least touching the bar.
The second step is to bring your shoulder blades together and firmly contract your back. Pulling up with a too narrow grip increases the intervention of the arm flexor muscles, which is not the objective of the exercises here!
The third step is to lower yourself with a slow and controlled movement back to the starting position.
To achieve this pull, imagine that your hands are just hooks. As you pull, project your chest forward while arching your back to optimize the work of your back muscles.
Which muscles are involved in the pull-up?
The back and arm muscles are the main muscles involved in the pull-up. During this exercise, the large dorsal, large round, trapezius, rhomboid, posterior deltoids are the muscles that mainly participate in the movement. (see Frederic Delavier's sketch). The muscles of the forearm, the biceps are also concerned.
It is important to underline that every practitioner must know during the realisation of a sport gesture what is the best trajectory to perform. This allows them to monitor their movement and to correct themselves in the event of a wrong trajectory. The practitioner must also identify the muscles responsible for the movement.
From a purely anatomical and biomechanical point of view, the primary function of the back muscles is to perform an adduction movement, i. e. the limbs move closer to the body axis. They lower the arm and close the arm-trunk angle.
How does the width of the back increase?
These basic biomechanical concepts allow us to understand that with an expressly reduced amplitude, the lowering of the arm and the closing of the arm-trunk angle is maximal (adduction) in a wide grip. The stress is therefore maximal for the dorsal muscles.
According to an article of Jean Texier in "Un monde du Muscle" of the Eighties, "in spite of the geometers partisans of the narrow catch with the high bar, because it gives more amplitude of work to the back. It is the very wide grip which gives the width of the back of those who practice it lean the reduced amplitude. "
Indeed, with only one exercise, practiced in this way, the width of the back develops very easily.
For a complete and harmonious development, it is necessary to recommend to vary the angles of work and to combine narrow grip, wide grip, or even reversed grip. It is also necessary to vary the different regimes of contractions (slow, fast, explosive), while working on the harmony of each movement.
In short, to increase the width of your back, you must practice the wide grip scrupulously and harmoniously, while taking into account the basics in biomechanics. It also requires patience, perseverance and endurance. But as the saying goes, "you have to suffer to be beautiful". Here, "you have to suffer to be beautiful". Remember that a broad back is an element in developing a beautiful male figure.
So, try to put your ego and laziness in the wardrobe, and train to have a wider back ! Have a good workout, good progress!
