Why Train Grip Strength to Unlock the Pull-Up?

What do pull-ups have to do with grip strength? Before I looked into it properly, I always thought the two had nothing to do with each other.

I used to have zero interest in unlocking the pull-up. First, I was genuinely too weak. All my life, pull-ups were just not a thing for someone heavy like me with weak upper-body strength. Second, once I started working out, there was so much room to improve elsewhere: bench press, squat and deadlift all had a long way to go. At first I couldn't even do a push-up, so pull-ups were nowhere on my mind.

A while ago, my friend Yuehui posted that he'd unlocked the pull-up. I was happy for him, but at the same time a weird competitive streak shot up in me.

I'm going to unlock the pull-up too!!!

No time like the present. My big three lifts have all hit a plateau anyway, so why not train something else?

So I researched the movement specifically and found it isn't that complicated. The only thing I didn't expect was how closely pull-ups are tied to grip strength.

Once I understood it, it made sense. I once wrote a post about an exercise called the "dead hang," which is the starting position of a pull-up: hanging from a bar and doing nothing.

But even doing nothing, a dead hang isn't easy. Last year I could hang for 30 seconds. This year I've slipped to under 20. I badly need to train it!

How long you can hang from the bar directly decides how many pull-ups you can do. Even if your lats, teres major and teres minor have plenty left, once you can't hang on, none of it matters.

That's where grip strength is crucial: the stronger your grip, the longer you can hang, and the longer you can hang, the better your pull-ups.

That's why, if you want to train pull-ups, the first thing to train is grip.

If your grip can't hold you on the bar for ten seconds, you'll run out of steam fast even on assisted pull-ups, because your grip gives out.

So I'm doing dedicated grip training.

How do you train grip?

I mainly use two exercises.

1. Dead hang

Dead hangs don't just build a solid base for pull-ups. They also relax and stretch your shoulders and back. They're a rare, excellent exercise.

To train it, first test your max hold time.

Say my max is 20 seconds. Then I take 50% of that, so three sets of 10 seconds.

2. Farmers carry

This is one of the stations in Hyrox.¹ Simply put, you carry kettlebells or dumbbells and walk. It's a serious test of grip strength and core.

Pick a dumbbell or kettlebell you can hold for at least 40 seconds, walk until failure, and repeat for three sets.

Of course, besides grip, practicing assisted pull-ups and building up your lats, teres major and teres minor matters too. But what I want to stress here is that grip strength plays a crucial role in the pull-up.

In all pulling work, grip matters. Any time you lift something from below, you're using your grip.

Dr. Peter Attia also stresses how important grip strength is for ordinary people in Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity.

1. Grip strength is a "proxy marker" for overall strength and longevity. He cites several large studies showing that grip strength is significantly associated with all-cause mortality: the weaker your grip, the higher your risk of death. He doesn't think grip itself is necessarily the cause, but it reflects a person's overall muscle strength and physical function very well.
2. Grip strength is about staying independent in old age. He links grip to daily function: carrying grocery bags, opening jars, holding the handrail on the stairs, and especially grabbing something to steady yourself when you're about to fall. For older people, falls are a major cause of disability and death, and grip strength is a key link in keeping a fall from turning into something serious.
3. Build a reserve for your older self ahead of time. He stresses again and again that muscle strength keeps declining with age, so in midlife you should train your strength far above "good enough." That way, by your seventies and eighties, even after the decline, you still have enough margin to keep your quality of life.

He gives a standard for grip and the two exercises above:

His specific standards (targets for people around 40)

• Dead hang: about 2 minutes for men, about 90 seconds for women.
• Farmers carry: for men, a total load in both hands equal to your bodyweight; for women, about 75% of bodyweight. Walk for 1 minute.

Just looking at those standards makes my hands go weak. There's a chasm between me and them.

But whatever.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Sleep on brushwood, taste the gall, and three thousand armored men of Yue can swallow Wu.

Just train!!

Footnotes

1. Hyrox is an indoor fitness race that combines running with functional training. Competitors work through a series of stations back to back, including the SkiErg, sled push and farmers carry. ↩