7 min readWHAT DO MOVIE training montages, Instagram highlight reels, streetcorner contests, and livestreamed world record attempts have in common? They’re all focused on a singular move: the pullup. The exercise looks simple: You hang suspended in the air, pull your head above your hands, then lower. There’s no fancy equipment or facilities required, so people can (and do) perform pullups anywhere (including, apparently, international airports ).
Even in this era that judges physicality at every turn, the pullup stands above other moves. (See: the furor over RFK Jr.'s dubious fitness challenges or popular social accounts like Body By Mark , whose viral clips often end with a challenge for a cash prize.) You can call out Pete Hegseth for his bench press, and you can roll your eyes at influencers doing backflip pushups, but the pullup is different, a unique blend of accessibility and challenge. "It's not a circus trick. I think it's probably the most attainable thing that people can do that a lot of people can't do," says trainer and MH Advisory Board member Don Saladino.
The pullup—and the way people view it—is actually much more nuanced in practice, both in its form and function. How the exercise is perceived is often more about who is doing the reps than any form standard. Start talking about CrossFitters or politicians showing off, and the entire conversation blows up.
The History of the Pullup
TO UNDERSTAND HOW we got to pullup pandemonium, you need to understand the history of the movement. That stretches further back than you might think. People have been pulling themselves off the ground for as long as humans have been bipedal. But when did the pullup evolve from a functional part of climbing to the paragon of total-body strength we know today? Fitness historian Dr. Conor Heffernan of Ulster University (whose personal background with the move was fraught, taking 18 months to nail his first reps) points to precursor traditions in Ancient Egypt, India, and Greco-Roman military training—but the real history of the modern pullup as we know it began at the start of the nineteenth century. “The early 1800s are super important, because this is when you get regular, standardized exercise systems emerging and pullups (or vertical pulls) being part of that,” Heffernan tells MH.
Even though the movement pattern is essential to human function and practiced around the world without formal codification, that was when Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, who is known as “the father of gymnastics,” created his Prussian Turnverein system in what is now Germany. His methods were widely adopted by the colonial powers of that time. The term pullup originates in the 1840s or early 1850s, and was used in training systems specifically designed for women during this period.
A few decades later, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, pullups fell out of mode—mostly because outsized personalities like Eugen Sandow and Bernarr MacFadden started showcasing workouts with specialized equipment, presaging modern influencers in turning their acolytes into consumers. Heffernan says these figures were more focused on aesthetics than function (even though the move does build your V-taper). The pullup did maintain a strong foothold in spaces where the latter was valued: Physical education and military training.
By the 1920s and ‘30s, the pullup was introduced into bodybuilding courses as a means to build arm muscle. By the 1940s, the exercise was included in military training regimens like the US Army Ground Forces Test as a benchmark for overall fitness (minimum number of reps to pass: six ).
Even while Schwarzenegger and his peers programmed the pullup during the Golden Age of bodybuilding in the 1960s and 70s, the exercise’s popularity of the exercise waned. New machines offered a novel way for trainees to hone their muscles with a vertical pull. But the move was never fully obsolete. Pullups were “always there at a baseline—they’re always a dull hum in the background,” Heffernan says. “But then you get these peaks where the volume is turned up because people rediscover it, or they start to put more onus on it.”
Indeed, with the rise of functional fitness and CrossFit at the turn of the millennium, pullups came back into vogue. They’ve become even more prevalent on social media. But today, pullups don’t all look the same across all forms of fitness: CrossFit has its kipping, military and functional fitness trainees swear by rigid movement standards for their punishing workouts, and calisthenics devotees have BarStarz and other heroes who can bang out rep after rep at playgrounds and even add weights à la powerlifting.
Why Do We Police the Pullup So Hard?
EVERYTHING THAT MAKES the pullup appealing also makes the exercise—and anyone doing it—a target for criticism. Whether the pullupper is RFK Jr., or just another bro struggling on some scaffolding on Instagram, the Pullup Police always show up. Scroll through the comments on any pullup video, and you’ll see someone commenting “no reps here.”
“A lot of people at home are armchair experts,” Body By Mark says. “But most of it is in good fun, or maybe out of jealousy.”
Disputes about proper practice existed long before the science-based lifters first pulled up on the gym bros. “It's really important to look at why people are policing, because oftentimes, what's old is new,” Heffernan says. “That usually ties into the idea that there are certain ways of training that show how disciplined you are, how hard working you are, and that there is some hierarchy of fitness—one supreme way of exercising that everyone has to adhere to.”
Back in Prussia in the 1850s, a debate around the use of parallel and horizontal bars in gymnasiums escalated all the way to a governmental review—so Heffernan sees modern drama around pullups as just another set in history’s ocean of reps. “In the current moment, we have a continuation of this idea that there's one way to train,” he says. “Pullups can be a really easy proxy for that.”
The impulse to pass judgment on someone based on how they perform an exercise is tempting, especially if there are other factors at play. You might want to declare RFK, Jr.’s reps a sham, but without understanding why and how his form looks like it does, you might be better served commenting on his confounding policies and why he feels the need to posture in videos like this instead .
“It's really important to look at why people are policing, because oftentimes, what's old is new,” Heffernan says. Only a month after RFK, Jr. posted the training clip that whipped up discourse about his form, news broke that the guy underwent surgery on his rotator cuff.
No pullup will look the same, regardless of how much we try to legislate on IG. One of Saladino’s training partners is in his sixties with a long history of physical trauma, including gun and knife wounds, but “is one of the best people I’ve ever seen doing a pullup,” according to the trainer. The only problem is, the guy can’t straighten his elbows. “You're going to turn to this guy and say, ‘stop doing the pullup?” Saladino asks. “Is he better off training, or not training?” Even Saladino has had to shift to a neutral grip for his reps as he recovers from a forearm strain.
It’s also not a zero-sum move. Not everyone will be able to use the exercise the same way. People with bigger bodies will likely struggle to rep out pullups because they have a whole lot more to lift off the ground than smaller folks. Powerlifters and strongmen struggle to do pullups reliably, even though they are what most people perceive as “strong.”
If mobility, strength, or your body type make reps difficult, you can train other, similar movements instead; Saladino says he’d have his friend swap in a single-arm pulldown. But if and when you feel the need to hit that bar, you should know what you’re doing.
What Should (Usually) Count as a Pullup Rep
WHAT CONSTITUTES A good pullup rep presents a modern day schism in the church of fitness. Arguments burn up in forum threads, social posts, and comments. Everyone from military and bodybuilding spaces to calisthenics and (especially) CrossFit gyms have their own standards. But like all lifts, the best pullup form depends on your goals.
If you're aiming to build muscle and strength, here's what that looks like in practice.
In general, there are two key concepts to remember when doing pullups. First, aim to pull as high as you can, ideally getting your chin over the bar. Doing this will keep the emphasis on lats, rhomboids, and smaller back muscles. Aim to let your elbow fully straighten when you return to the starting position, maximizing the stretch on your lats. To keep tension on your lats, biceps, and forearms, avoid momentum. Kipping, like CrossFitters do during butterfly pullups, can build muscle, but it's mostly done to build capacity. That exercise is designed to train gymnastics skills at volume rather than strength.
If you need more help, start with these five exercises. “I don't care if you have to wiggle from a pullup bar to learn how to do it. It will change your life and perspective on fitness,” says trainer and Ladder coach Bobby Maximus, who often programs the exercise in his simple, brutal bodyweight routines. “When someone walks up to a bar and starts ripping out pullups, you're like, that is a conditioned person.”
With the long view of history, Heffernan prefers to stay out of the comment section. Even if he believes someone sucks personally or politically, he’s neutral when it comes to their approach to the gym. “I think anyone doing movement should be celebrated, and I don't need to police someone else's workout,” he says, noting that he could hit a dozen reps at his peak, but lately has been working to build back his strength. “I'm struggling enough with my own.”
Brett Williams, NASM-CPT, PES, a senior editor at Men's Health, is a certified trainer and former pro football player and tech reporter. You can find his work elsewhere at Mashable, Thrillist, and other outlets.
