Pull-up bar exercises

What do you do before your first rep?

The most common mistake is waiting. An assisted pull-up is not a substitute exercise - it is the same movement with part of the weight taken off, done through a full range from day one. The atlas carries three different ways to take that weight off: a band looped over the bar, a foot resting on a bench, and a version where you help yourself with a leg from a step. Each of them lets you train the exact pattern you are trying to own.

Negatives are their own category. A muscle handles more load braking a movement than driving it, so a controlled lower from the top is doable well before a full pull-up is. The description of that variation gives three to five seconds to reach a straight-arm hang and warns against hanging passively at the top - the pause is meant to be tight, not restful.

What both roads have in common: what counts is how many clean full-range reps you did, not how many times your chin cleared the bar thanks to your legs.

Wide, narrow or underhand?

The underhand grip is usually the easiest, because it puts the biceps in a good position where it genuinely helps. An overhand grip at shoulder width is the neutral option and the one most often described as the basic version. A wide grip shortens the distance you travel, but it also drives the shoulders further into external rotation and some people find it less comfortable. A narrow neutral grip is the compromise, and with a cranky elbow or wrist it often turns out to be the only one that feels fine.

Variations like commando pull-ups, archer pull-ups or the muscle-up are a different category: they add a shift of weight to one side or a dynamic transition over the bar. They make sense once the basic reps are clean and repeatable, not as a way around the fact that they are not yet.

Whatever the grip, one thing holds: the bar has to be mounted solidly. The catalog repeats that note on every variation and on the hanging stretch, because the whole setup carries your entire weight at a single point.