Subject: RE: Men - Can you do pullups?FYI, if you're doing pullups with your palms facing away from you and you're not fully extending at the bottom of the rep, you are not fully extending your lats/rhomboids (the muscles you SHOULD be working) and putting all the extra stress on your shoulders, pecs, and triceps (the muscles that should be HELPING you, not doing the work). Now...if you're doing chinups with your palms facing you, it's not really a problem if you don't fully extend, since you're in essence doing a static hold on your biceps at the bottom of the rep. It might actually HELP to not fully extend if you're doing them supinated like that. It's like doing partial reps to squeeze every bit of strength out. But pronated (palms away), you really need to fully extend to build strength and endurance in the lats/rhomboids. I've also never heard that full extension is bad for ligaments/tendons and with my CrossFit exercises totalling over 200 pullups sometimes, I would think by now that if there was some kind of negative effect from it, I'd see it. The only effects I've seen from full extension in my pullups is BIG gains in my lats. Incidentally, for my CF workouts, I'm not allowed to count any reps that I don't fully extend for. |