Neutral grip L-pullups

I finish every Foundation workout with 5 sets of 3-5 neutral grip L-pullups. As this exercise doesn't seem to feature in Foundation I thought I'd post a form check here. Pulling height is maxed out as I'm pulling the handles to my collarbones.

I find this good training for the elbow flexors. What do you think of this exercise in general?

This was my last set today.

My thoughts...  What are you trying to train here? And where are you in the RC progressions? My 2 cents would be that this is not really adding anything if you are already doing pulling work during your workout, and it may be putting you at risk of overtraining injuries if it's in addition to a fair bit of other pulling work. Certainly all depends on your overall conditioning, training experience, and prior injury record.  But the biggest question should always be "what is this providing me beyond what i'm getting in my workout", and then "is it worth the added training stress to accomplish that and can I adequately recover before the next workout".  Form looks fine to me, so my suspicion is you are fairly advanced in your pulling strength and that this is not going to add anything to your progress.  Your focus should be on harder progressions that will build your max strength.  If you're just looking to add work capacity, then you should do an exercise that is much easier for you than this one, of which you can only do 5 x 3-5.

haha, sorry, just saw you have your list of your progressions down below.  Since you are only on PE3 on RC, I would suggest that efforts should go into that more so than adding junk miles.  I suppose one could argue that you are maintaining a skill, but I would argue that you are going to put yourself at risk of brachioradialis issues and slow your progress. See what others have to say, but those are my thoughts.

Hi Douglas

Thanks for your comments. I'm actually on RC4 (I'll update my progressions soon), and have mastered RC5 at 5 x 15, but I only train F1 RC once a week. My two other weekly pulling sessions consist of 5 sets of normal width or wide grip pull-ups with pronated, neutral and supinated grips with BW or weighted, 25-30 reps in total. I don't go beyond 30 reps but add weight to sets 2-4 if I could do 30 reps the previous session. After this session I work on other progressions and do the neutral grip L-pulls at the end when I have recovered most of my pulling strength. I rest 1 min between these 5 sets. Recently I've been doing 21 reps in total and could probably do 5 x 5 if I were fresh. I've built up my brachioradialis with legless RCs and they are fine, I don't feel any strain. I don't have any serious prior injuries.

Why am I training these? As a substitute for RCs, mainly, during the cold season. Both use a neutral grip and seem to target the same muscles. Problem is it gets very cold in my gym for a few months which makes it hard to grip the rope (that's slippery to begin with) and makes my skin hurt. I'll be switching back to climbs soon now that it has warmed up.

These do come up in later progressions so I would not worry about them at this stage. Focus on getting through the current RC progressions first.

Hmm...you must mean the similar exercises in F2, Mark. I prefer working both horizontal and vertical pulling (and pushing) elements every week, even ones I've mastered. Sure, it adds volume but as long as I see steady progress and have good recovery I'm not concerned about overdoing it. But I really need the monthly deload! :-).

Quick reminder:

Differences between pronated, supinated and neutral pullup explained by science

On 29/03/2015 at 3:05 PM, Léo Aïtoulha said:

Extremely interesting article and report from http://www.sci-sport.com/
 
http://www.sci-sport.com/articles/differences-de-sollicitations-musculaires-entre-tractions-pronation-et-supination-107.php
 
For non-french speakers, just look at the histogram.

- Grey = pronated ; red = supinated ; green = neutral
- Muscles involved from left to right on the x-axis : external oblique - erector spine - pectoralis major - lower trapezius - infraspinatus - biceps brachii - latissimus dorsi

I've read that study before. Good idea to let more people know about it.