Let's pump up your back

PULL-UPS

PERFORMANCE
Once again! Grab the bar with an overhand grip, palms forward, 10 centimeters wider than your shoulders. The arms and upper body are fully stretched. Relax your shoulders to fully stretch your lats. The starting position has been reached. Inhale, hold your breath, and begin to pull yourself up. We control the movement of the elbows - we lower them down through the sides, pulling ourselves up. Pull yourself up until your chest is at the level of the bar or slightly higher. Exhale - smoothly lower to the starting position. Repeat the movement the required number of times.

MAIN MUSCLES - PARTICIPANTS IN MOVEMENT
Of the muscles of the shoulder joint, the main work is performed by the upper bundles of the latissimus dorsi, the lower bundles of the pectoralis major muscle and the teres major muscle. These muscles are supported by the coracobrachialis, subscapularis, short head of the biceps and long head of the triceps.
The muscles of the shoulder girdle that participate in the exercise are the rhomboid and pectoralis minor.

WORK OF MUSCLES AND JOINTS
An adducting movement occurs in the shoulder joint; the shoulders move in the lateral plane of the body from top to bottom along the sides of the body. This movement is produced by the lower bundles of the pectoralis major, the upper bundles of the latissimus dorsi muscle and the teres major muscle. Of the muscles of the shoulder girdle, the rhomboid and pectoralis minor rotate the scapula downward. In this case, the right shoulder blade rotates clockwise, the left one - counterclockwise, when viewed from behind. The axis of rotation passes through the middle of the blade.

COMMENTS The biceps is not involved in this movement, although many athletes are convinced of the opposite. This is easy to check: turn your palm towards you, bend your arm and tense your biceps so that it becomes visible. Now turn your palm away from you. The biceps "disappeared". Since you use a straight grip in the exercise, the biceps is excluded from the work (not counting the short head, which is included in the work of the shoulder joint). But, on the other hand, the brachialis, brachioradialis and triceps are actively involved in the movement of the elbow joint; the long head helps in pulling you up. To maximally work the upper part of the lat, which forms the “wings” and visually widens the back, the grip should be as wide as possible without losing comfort. The wider the grip, the less the lower part of the pectoralis major muscle (pectoralis major) is involved in the work, and the greater the emphasis is on the top of the latissimus and teres major muscles. The narrower the grip, the more of the lat and the bottom of the pectoralis major are included in the work. Be sure to reach your chest to the bar or even higher, while keeping your elbows out to the sides. This way you force all the muscles involved in the movement to work along the entire available trajectory of movement. By the way, it should be noted that the wider the grip, the shorter the effective working path. On the contrary, by narrowing your grip, you move away from the bar and your muscles work harder to pull you up.

You should not perform pull-ups until the back of your head touches the bar. This greatly reduces the range of motion, which means the muscles work less. In addition, it is uncomfortable and even traumatic. The shoulder joint is generally physiologically adapted for moving the arm in the front, so to speak, hemisphere; forcing it to work at the border, and especially beyond it, is wrong. When at the end point your head and chest move forward and your elbows move back, your shoulder joint ends up in a very unnatural position, which makes it very vulnerable, even dislocating is possible.

When pull-ups are performed with a wide grip, the coracobrachialis and subscapularis muscles are actively involved in the work. The subscapularis is an adductor muscle that is involved in moving the shoulder up and down in a flat manner.