Strategies for Increasing Pullups?

I've seen so many different approaches, but haven't found one that really works. I'm stuck in the low - mid 20's. My goal is 30 strict pullups.

I've thought about taking a Foundation approach to progressions, but without going into too much detail, I don't think you'd be able to maintain the volume as it goes forward.

Any ideas?

I've searched the forum, but if there's a thread that covers this please point me towards it.

Simply (in order to maintain) once a week perform 4 set of 10 reps with 1' rest in between the sets at the end of your workout. in the other day you can build up bases with foundations.

Hmm, sets of ten will help build up the max? If so I'll give it a try. Thanks.

1 hour ago, Parkerson Seward said:

Hmm, sets of ten will help build up the max? If so I'll give it a try. Thanks.

I think he means for maintaining your pull up strenght, not for increasing. In your title post you ask about how to increase but later you speak about how to maintain the volume if I understand properly. For increasing your pull up strenght in the long term you should focus in Foundation training, while maintaining your current pull up strenght.

Parkerson,

30 strict pullups are very hard to achieve. I was able to get as high as 28 strict ones and did 30 but would call the last few sloppy reps. For me this may have been about the upper range of my strength and endurance range. A few things that helped me moved from low 20s to upper 20s was losing that last bit of bodyfat (for me that meant going from about 170 to 160 at 5 foot seven), training back and biceps every 5 days and combining high and low rep training. I would do about 5 sets in the 3 to 5 rep range and maybe a few one arm chin ups for strength followed by one or sometimes 2 all out set to failure which was in the 20-25 rep range after my heavy low rep sets. For me I found this was probably the most effective means to build the strength and endurance to get close to that elusive 30 reps range. I did very little direct bicep work as that tends to overtrain  my biceps.

A friend of mine used extra weight and principles like drop sets to fire things up. Maybe this will work for you, too? If I remember it right he did something like (+ 20 kg max -> + 10 kg max -> bw max) x 3 Sets or something like that.

On 3/10/2017 at 10:53 PM, Joachim Hecht said:

A friend of mine used extra weight and principles like drop sets to fire things up. Maybe this will work for you, too? If I remember it right he did something like (+ 20 kg max -> + 10 kg max -> bw max) x 3 Sets or something like that.

This type of work has a sense only if you have already mastered a decent amount of basic strength. if not it will result in a local overtraining of tissues.

Time under tension. You can change the grips to activate the muscles differently. You could also do 3-5x3-5 reps but spend more time on each individual rep and rest 3-5 minutes between each set. As you get better at that, work on harder pullup progressions, as shown in the Foundation progressions. 

There are a variety of methods to break platues - increase volume  - intensity ( loading) - frequency etc. 

But everything is really a guess givin the limits of knowing anything about your training /  body imbalances ...etc .

Anyway,  a simple fix for improving my pulling strength / pull- ups was hinge - rows  (foundation one)

a month  of low volume hinge rows 

I tested ( playing around really)... and had a very nice improvement in my  pull- up strength.

Agreed with increasing time under tension. I can do three to four strict pull ups, and my coach has me doing 4x8 with a band so I stay on the bar, pulling, longer than I can without the band. I used to hate bands for pullups, and for learning them, I still do, but for adding volume once you're activating the muscles correctly, I'm starting to love the band.