BRUTAL PULL WORKOUT | Torn Biceps and All! – ATHLEAN-X™

If you want a brutal pull workout that will train your lats, biceps and upper back all in one training session, then you’re going to want to watch this video. I perform this workout as a full length pull workout follow along with Jesse in a local gym, and I don’t let my torn biceps hold me back. This is something that the viewers have asked for for a long time, and now here it is. Many people think of back and biceps when performing a pull workout. That is predominantly correct but you do not want to forget about the other muscles of the arm and upper back that also need attention.

We start this pull workout with pullups, but not any kind of pullups. You see, I believe that one of the bigger mistakes I made as a younger trainee was concentrating on building up the number of reps I could do on pull-ups without focusing early enough on adding more weight. After a couple warmup sets of bodyweight pullups I go right with the weighted pullup variation. Here, we do a few sets training close to failure on every set.

We also take the opportunity to do drop sets as well. Perform a set of weighted pullups and immediately strip away the weight and then hop right back up on the bar and rep out the bodyweight version until failure once again.

Next up is the chest supported row. The particular machine I’m using here is called the humbler. Why? Because the amount of weight that you can use on it is less than what you may think you could use. It does such a good job of isolating the back muscles and taking the lower back out of it that you are forced to use more of the muscles you are trying to train. Once again, we use a few different intensity techniques to make this brutal pull workout even harder.

On my last set, Jesse is assisting with lifting the weight through the positive part of the rep and allowing me to focus mostly on the slow eccentric part of the rep. This has a great stimulus for muscle growth due to the prolonged time under tension and the muscle damage that can be incurred through slow eccentrics.

Next is the lat pulldown. Typically, I prefer the underhand variation of the move when it’s included in a pull workout. That said, with my torn right biceps I have to be a little conscientious of this and make the necessary adaptation. This involves using a bar that allows me to take a slightly more neutral grip. The decrease in supination can take some of the strain off the biceps and let me focus more on pulling with the lats and mid back.

Again here, we take the opportunity to intensify the sets in this pull workout by performing some slow negatives at the end of the sets performed on this exercise.

I’ll purposely increase the weight on the stack and perform a bit of a cheat on the concentric part of the lift just to put myself into position for another overloaded negative.

We move onto the biceps and brachialis at this point. One of my favorite ways to train the biceps is with a standing alternating dumbbell curl. That said, again I have to make some considerations for my torn biceps. Instead of grabbing equal weight and letting the weakness of the right arm dictate the load that my healthy arm has to lift, I simply grab two different weights.

In general, I have about a 10% decrease in strength in the right arm vs the left arm on my direct biceps exercises.

The brachialis is then targeted with a hammer curl variation. Instead of doing a typical neutral grip hammer curl I can increase the focus by taking a fully pronated position of the forearm. This is called a cross body hammer curl. Once again, I look for an opportunity to perform some drop sets towards the end of the working sets for this great pull exercise.

Finally, no pull workout is complete without my favorite exercise, and the one with pull in it’s name – face pulls! Here you want to see if you can grab two ropes to perform it. The additional rope allows you to get into a better arm position at the contracted position of every rep.

Finish up with some overhead raises on the face pulls to make sure that you are increasing the time under tension and treating each and every rep as a focused contraction.

Here is a recap of the exercises shown in this pull workout:

Weighted Pullups
Chest Supported Rows
Neutral Gip Lat Pulldowns
Standing Alternating Dumbbell Curls
Cross Body Hammer Curls
Facepulls

If you like this pull workout and are looking for a variation of this that you can try yourself, be sure to head to athleanx.com and check out our AX1 program. It has a push, pull legs training split that you can use to build ripped athletic muscle in just 90 days.

If you want a free pull workout that you can try, be sure to use the athlean x pull workout here on youtube and remember to subscribe and turn on your notifications via the link below so you never miss a new video when it’s published.

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