Why jumping pull ups?

[Kevin Thomas]

On the video demo on the mainpage, jumping pullups are peformed where you are holding onto the bar with your arms fully extended. You jump/pull your chin over the bar and drop back down, at no time do you let go of the bar. That's how we do them at the affiliate I go to. I've never seen this 9" jump standard before, but I've only been around a year.

[Arturo Garcia]

So you have to fully extend the arms at the bottom? Darn, I was doing it all wrong for a long time then. To accomplish full arm extension I believe a little knee bend is gonna be required, and that might contribute to getting more power out of the jump, which I wouldn't think is the main idea of the jumping PU.. that's why I just bounce with my feet off the floor and try to use more upper body.

[Tom Woodward]

Yes, there should certainly be some knee bend. I'd say about as much as you'd use for a box jump or push press. If the arms are fully extended when you hit that amount of knee bend, then the bar is at the perfect height. The 50 is purely a long metabolic test, which is why the loads are light and jumping pullups are used. If you're a monster (and slightly crazy), you can do the whole thing with a weighted vest.

[Kevin Thomas]

Yes, knee bend will be required if you're not letting go of the bar. You'd risk hurting your elbows and shoulders if you didn't cushion the landing some. People here sometimes do a bit of a kip on the jumping pullup by coming up on their toes when they bend their knees. Then, they rock back onto their foot while doing the jump. I'm not sure if that's RX though.

-Kevin

[David Stout]

Originally Posted by Scott Allen Hanson

Long ago, the main-page specified that for jumping pu's, you should stand under the bar with arms extended, such that the distance from finger-tips to where the bar touches your forearm is about 9 inches.

Quote directly from the mainpage (from 060626 & 060627):

Set-up so that your pull-up bar is about nine inches below your max reach and jump vigorously for each rep. Count only the reps where you go from full arm and shoulder extension to chin over the bar.

The work required to perform jumping pull-ups [video] is identical to that required for strict or kipping pull-ups. Quite obviously, max rep pull-ups are limited by stamina (localized muscular endurance); what is less obvious are the metabolic costs of performing pull-ups. Just attempting 100 jumping pull-ups gives the athlete a taste of what would be required metabolically to perform higher rep pull-ups by any method - especially kipping because they accrue at a similar rate.

This is demoed in the video above (WFS link from mainpage) as well as in the Filthy 50 video (WFS): Video

[Kevin Thomas]

Hmmm. That makes sense that you stand so the bar is 9" below your max reach, not 9" above your max reach, which is how I was reading it. Obviously, this means that significant knee bend should occur for each rep in order to have full arm extension. Thanks for digging that up.