Women can you do pull ups? (Page 2)

I have noticed that those women who can do them are pretty slender...less weight makes it easier to pull yourself up. I'm at 20.5% body fat but my lean body mass is 127 and I'm only 5'6" so as the guy at the gym says you have to pull up all those lower body muscles you have that aren't helping you.

Smith machine pull ups..my coach had me do those two years ago. Lat pull downs help too, right?

When I was a kid in elementary school we had the Presidential Fitness award, I easily could do everything other than the bent arm hang. I tried doing that so many times every year when we did that testing. I was a competitive figure skater so lower body stuff was easy for me as a kid. Never did anything upper body until tris and then strength training.

I to love strength training, how it makes me feel, how it makes me look...my daughters 9. 11,& 13 want to do it too and they work out on a ball with hand weights at home. 

We put a pull up bar in our basement.  I honestly think they are harder than the ones at the gym.  Maybe that is one of the other reasons I quit.  That and I put on muscle like crazy!

Did anyone post this yet?  It's how to work up to doing a pullup.  I love this woman's blog, mostly because she has almost my exact height/weight/bodyfat proportions.  But I am not looking to be able to do a pullup, so I haven't tried this yet.

www.stumptuous.com/cms/displayarticle.php?aid=51

Great article with lots of helpful tips!!!

My coach thinks this is a good goal for me...cool..may take 6 month maybe longer but come next summer my upper body will be stronger. His suggestion for me for a grip is palms facing each others since I did separate my left shoulder 6 months ago as it is easier on my shoulder.

I find it super cool that many of us women have this goal. 

well, right now I am a big lazy slob, but last winter I worked out at the COOLEST gym in Madison, WI: The Monkey Bar Gym.  All bodyweight, all the time, with a real emphasis on progression and perfecting form.

Anyway, I have one of these "Jungle Gyms" 

info here  

It's so easy to use, and as you get stronger and stronger you can change the angle until you are doing a full pull up. Start out with the rope at 60 degrees, and when you can pull up 10 x perfectly, slowly reduce the angle until you are pulling yourself up at 90 degrees. Y'all would love it!

Videos from the gym are here 

 I've read about the Monkey Bar Gym!!!  I'm so jealous you've worked out there   If I had any kind of ambition, I'd open one just like it!!!

Jeez Kath, that brings back a flood of memories!  I was one of the smaller kids in my class, so the bent arm hang during the Presidential fitness test was one of my few moments of athletic fame growing up, ha ha.  Don't know how many pull ups I could do now though, I doubt very many.

On the other hand, most of the best runners and bikers I know have skinny little T-Rex arms, so I don't worry too much about building up arm strength. Then again, most of them aren't trying to become better swimmers I guess.

Looks like a very fun place. Lucky you that you got to workout there. You find and do lots of very cool stuff Possum.

Jungle Gym seems like a good workout if you don't have access to a gym or  they don't have the stuff to help so we can work on pull ups.

I think it is so cool that so many BT women have this dream. 

Right? MiMi's MoKeY BaR GyM

Keep workin' it girls...get that chin over that bar!

Wow, that looks SUPER cool, and inexpensive too!  Maybe I'll ask for one for Christmas.

When I was in 8th grade (and could do all the pushups I had mentioned previously), I trained on my grandma's walker.  She had fallen and needed the walker, but got better and then it was just sitting around.  I put it in my room and every day I'd sit on the floor with my feet sticking out forward, grabbed the handles and pulled myself up a few times.  It was great because it was essentially assisted but still enough to help.  Then I'd do dips with my feet quasi-dragging in the floor.  Just doing that for a month or two made me ripped.  But then I stopped doing it and lost it all .  And I still never got to be able to do a real pullup.

I'm not a woman so no!

I'm working on this as I include wide grip pullups in my core workout.  Currently up to 9.  Last year (IIRC) when I was ~ 8 lbs lighter and working out more I got up to 2 sets of 10.  How quickly you lose it.

When I was ~20 I could do 3 one arm pull ups, those were the days!