This blew me away. I wasn’t even planning on writing a blog post today at all, but when Mike Gillette shared a video on Facebook just now of 7-year-old Marina Shvets setting a pull-ups record for Ukraine on Ukraine’s got talent I just couldn’t keep this unintended performance tip to myself. Thank goodness they seem to shoot this show with what seems like 50 different cameras, because across a few brief flashes, I could tell what she was doing.
Here’s the video of her knocking out 26 pull ups without dropping down from the bar:
Here’s what I learned from watching her… (I also made a video to show what I mean, so you can scroll down to that if you wish haha. My video is VERY boring compared to her feat… but hopefully you will learn something from it!)
Normally when I do dead hang pull ups, I have my thumb over the bar as a matter of habit and preference…
I used to wrap the thumb under the bar, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but when I started hanging around RKC people, they were mostly doing the thumb over the top of the bar “tactical grip” so I switched over. I also noticed that having the thumb on top let me get higher than I had with the thumb under the bar. While I had been engaging my thumb it was more just tightly wrapped around the top of the bar or pressing into the side of my hand with the side of my thumb. In Marina’s video, you may or may not notice what’s going on with her thumbs, no only are they on the top of the bar, they’re also actively engaged, not just wrapped, but engaged slightly rotated towards her hand, and pressing into the hand with the PAD of the thumb… HARD. In one of the shots you can actually see her squeeze and press the pad of her thumb into the side of her handas she makes yet another rep look very easy.
Thanks Mike, and thanks Marina for your VERY cool tip — as I once again work towards finally conquering (hopefully sooner rather than later) the Dragon Door Iron Maiden Challenge, little tips and tweaks like these are all the more valuable. Sometimes these subtle little things can be the difference in making a crucial rep happen.
Let me know if you try it! 🙂 🙂 🙂
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