Questions about Protracted scapular pull ups
I was watching Thenx's video on pull ups and he mentioned to keep your scapular forward and protracted rather than retracted because you have much more range of motion. This is different from what I've learnt from just about anyone else regarding pull ups.
How do you activate your lats without retracting your scapular? I feel like this kind of pull up would heavily use forearms (to initiate), bicep and shoulder (for the movement), and lats only play a smaller role of stabilizing you when you're approaching the top. So even if you get much more range of motion, you're emphasizing different muscles. Is this the normal kind of pull up to train for a muscle up?
Thanks
Posted Jan 10, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC
66
I know this video and don't really understand his point either.
After the first rep, once you're back into dead hang, it doesn't matter how you hanged before the first rep. I think it's a confusing cue to use and that it doesn't have much application. Maybe it helps him but when I tried it, it didn't help me.
Sometimes you see videos of people stoping their descent to about 3/4 of the rep and that seems to help maintaining the initial arching but that's rare and it's not a beginner technique in terms of strength required.
That's often how it is about pullups though, you have a lot of videos and cues to choose from, but in the end as long as 1) your form doesn't make your prone to injury 2) you have good ROM 3) you have good activation (no excessive "curl-ups"), then to me that's a good pullup. Pronation/supination/neutral grip, grip width, precise joint angles (pulling with the elbows at 45° or tucked in), all of this is a matter of personal preference rather than absolute qualities IMO.
Pullup form elitism seems like a waste of time, most youtube people have very different forms and activations, yet they all have what we would judge as good form and obviously good pulling strength.
I get his point about being able to reach higher with your range of motion. With scapular protracted you're essentially pulling up and AROUND the bar, whereas with typical pull ups you're pulling up TO the bar. I'm just not sure about the muscles involved.
I feel like 1) You really wont get much lat activation doing pull ups like this and 2) It's heck of a lot harder to pull using forearms from a dead hang position for a pull up. Usually you retract your scapular and initiate with your lats.
The only reason I think you'd ever do pull ups like that is if you're working for a muscle up or explosive pull ups or something.
I may be wrong but to keep the scapular protracted as you pull up is quite similar to Pavel Tsatsouline's method wherein the body becomes "hollow" (imagine the front of your body forming the letter "c").
I've experimented on both protracted and retracted scapular pull-up movements and find that the protracted way seems to build arm strength while the retracted way promotes hypertrophy (since it's the lats which is a larger muscle group does most of the work).
Would you say the hollow pull up from a dead hang would be pretty difficult? I just can't imagine it being in the same difficulty level as a normal pull up. The amount of forearm power needed to initiate it would be immense.
Oh absolutely...the hollow pull-up is tougher. Probably the reason why Pavel was insistent the only way to gain strength is GTG and executing every rep in strict form.
Another is that visualizing your body as the letter "c" while doing the hollow pullups will sort of force you to engage your abs and core.
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