Leon Robotham - 01 April 2010 12:42 AM

can you shed some light on the techniques you used to be able to achieve this in such a short time?

  Weeeeelllllll, it’s actually been a loooooooooooooooong road to get to this point.  I will spare you the details of the roadtrip and briefly describe the four coaching sessions with BigD. 

1. Hang from the bar and push/pull the shoulders together to initiate the swing, ensuring the legs are passively, not actively, moving along with the upper body.  Up until that point, I’d been actively swinging my legs at the hips and would wind up doing toes to bar. 
2. Same as above, with a slight tweak.  BigD told me to swing and briefly release my hands from the bar and regrip when I was on the back side of the bar.  This would help me learn the timing of when I was to pull. 
3. Same as session number 2.
4. More swing/release/regrip technique with a pull after two releases/regrips.  So, it was release, release, pull.  I did not complete a successful pull-up at that time. 

Please note that BigD made it very clear that I was not to attempt anything beyond what he’d taught to that point when I would do my “homework”. 

It was during my “homework” that everything clicked.  I did the release, release, pull technique and shocked myself by getting over the bar when I pulled.  I only did the one that night.  I did not attempt any further pull-ups until the following week when I strung together 3.5 (yes, I count the half pull-ups).

Cherry2000 - 01 April 2010 08:37 PM

Leon Robotham - 01 April 2010 12:42 AM

can you shed some light on the techniques you used to be able to achieve this in such a short time?

  Weeeeelllllll, it’s actually been a loooooooooooooooong road to get to this point.  I will spare you the details of the roadtrip and briefly describe the four coaching sessions with BigD. 

1. Hang from the bar and push/pull the shoulders together to initiate the swing, ensuring the legs are passively, not actively, moving along with the upper body.  Up until that point, I’d been actively swinging my legs at the hips and would wind up doing toes to bar. 
2. Same as above, with a slight tweak.  BigD told me to swing and briefly release my hands from the bar and regrip when I was on the back side of the bar.  This would help me learn the timing of when I was to pull. 
3. Same as session number 2.
4. More swing/release/regrip technique with a pull after two releases/regrips.  So, it was release, release, pull.  I did not complete a successful pull-up at that time. 

Please note that BigD made it very clear that I was not to attempt anything beyond what he’d taught to that point when I would do my “homework”. 

It was during my “homework” that everything clicked.  I did the release, release, pull technique and shocked myself by getting over the bar when I pulled.  I only did the one that night.  I did not attempt any further pull-ups until the following week when I strung together 3.5 (yes, I count the half pull-ups).

Excellent stuff! We’ve been using number 1 at our box along with ring rows, isometric holds and a few negatives/kip here and there. I think it’s time for us to employ Big Ds swing/release/regrip technique, I actually do this myself to warm my shoulders up and sometimes just goofing around getting air. I’ve never thought about using it as a tool though. Doh! I’d definitely be counting the 3.5 pull-ups as well, you’ve worked hard for it