Pull ups and chin ups are the meat and potatoes of P90X. You do them in almost all of the P90X DVDs. For some people it is really hard to do pull ups. Actually, its pretty hard for everybody if you never did them in the past or you do not have enough body strength. heck, my brother struggled with doing them for 3 months before he could finally do 5 pull ups.

I always believe that the hardest thing about doing pull ups is getting it through your head that you can do them. A lot of the process of doing chin ups is mental. Yes, you do need to have muscle but once you tell yourself you can do them you have already done one.

Let's say you are frustrated because every time you do a P90X workout you just are not seeing any gains in your numbers or in your body. You dread waiting for the next time you do P90X because the chin up bar is laughing at you.

I learned this great tip from my girlfriends roommate. This is going to sound funny but it makes sense. We were at their place and her roommate was talking about a guy she used to date who moved from Michigan to New York City. He is into acting and dancing. The kind of acting and dancing where you strip for money. Yup, he's a male stripper. She kept talking about how hot he was and of course needed to show me a photo of him with his shirt off. The guy was in shape. I won't knock that.

Then she started talking about when she went to visit him in his apartment a year ago. She asked him why he had all of these "bars" between the door frames going from room to room. It was a typical 1 bedroom New York City apartment. His reply was that every time he walked to a new room he would do 5 chin ups. She could not believe he would do such a thing. It made sense to me. He's a stripper and needs to stay in shape. It also got me thinking that this was a genius of an idea. Think about how many times a day you walk between rooms and how many times you would have to do a chin up.

I tried this on myself yesterday. What I did was every time I went from the upper to the lower floor in my house I would do 5 chin ups. My pull up bar is hanging from the door frame of a spare bedroom next to mine. I ended up doing 40 chin ups yesterday and I didn't even workout. It only took 7 seconds to do the chin ups so it wasn't a great deal of time. You can check out my P90X results to see how much more defined my back muscles are from doing all of those chin ups and pull ups to see why its so important to do them.

What I like about this is it creates a habit but also gets you into the mindset of doing pull ups. Imagine if you struggle to do pull ups right now and you followed this technique. Every time you walked into one room in your house where you kept the chin up bar and had to do just 1 pull up. You might end up doing 10 pull ups that day alone. The next time you actually workout you would be ready to crank out some pull ups and chin ups. Hopefully you can use this tip to help you get over your fear of doing pull ups.

Post from: P90X Workout

A Great Tip On How To Do Pull Ups Better

I was doing the P90X Legs and Back DVD today. It was one of my favorite workouts when doing P90X. I think its because it is such a simple workout. The leg exercises are easy to do and for the most part all that you are doing with your back muscles is using them by doing chin ups. When I first started doing chin ups and pull ups I struggled to do just 1. I kept with it and started putting up some great P90X results.

I have been doing P90X for about a year now and still am showing gains when it comes to how many of something I can do or how much weight. Sure, I still take a couple days off when doing P90X here and there but I really need it. The rest is needed to be able to come back and "Bring It."

Anyways, my previous numbers from doing the P90X Legs and Back workout went something like this. I am not going to include the leg portion of the workouts. For the most part they are just a lot of lunges and very little if any weights are involved. I am only going to count the chin ups.

The four different chin ups/pull ups that are done during the P90X Legs and Back routine are "Reverse Grip Chin Ups," "Wide Front Pull Ups," "Closed Grip Overhand Pull-Ups," and "Switch Grip Pull Ups." You do each of these twice.

My previous workout I did

                                   First Time         Second Time

Reverse Grip Chin Up : 12                            12

Wide Front Pull Ups: 7                                  5

Closed Grip Overhand Pull Ups: 11               8

Switch Grip Pull-Ups: 8                                 8

                     Totals:   38              +             33 =   71 chin ups/pull ups

These numbers are very impressive for me. Some 5 weeks ago I did 59 total reps. Not bad for only doing this P90X workout once a week.

So today I stepped up to my P90X pull up bar and got busy. Here are numbers today.

                                            First Time          Second Time

Reverse Grip Chin Ups:               15                   12

Wide Front Pull Ups:                    8                     4

Closed Grip Overhand Pull-Ups: 12                  10

Switch Grip Pull Ups:                  8                       8

                             Totals:         43         +           34 =    77

You do not even know how excited I was when I got done. To see that I did 6 more pull ups than I did in a weeks time is a big gain. The one result that really stuck out the most was when I did 15 reverse grip chin ups. I do not know what got into me but as soon as I hit 12 I felt like I still had some more left in me and I cranked out 3 more.

Maybe it was all of the other workouts I have been doing like swimming and running that have helped me to get to this point. I can't say what it is besides some days I just dig down and bring it. My new goal with this P90X DVD is to get to where I can do 80 pull ups/chin ups during the workout. Now I am off to get a protein drink because I now I am going to be sore tomorrow.

Post from: P90X Workout

I Set A New Personal Chin Up Record Today With P90X