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Using a pull chin-up bar and progressive overload training to increase lats strength

Learn how to correctly apply the progressive overload training principle to increase strength in large muscle groups, such as your Latissimus Dorsi (lats) by doing chin-ups either at home or at the gym using a pull chin up bar.

Progressive overload training for strength gains

If you follow a proper strength training routine, your strength should increase from week to week.

Progressive overload lies at the heart of strength training. This strength training principle says that you should strive to increase either reps or weights or both in every workout.

This means that if you are currently doing a particular exercise with a certain amount of weight for 6-10 reps, you should increase the weight by approximately 5% as soon as you can do more than 10 reps with the current weight.

If you are just starting out, you should aim for a 5% increase in the weight for each exercise every week. If you have already been strength training for a while, you should try to increase your weights by 5% every two weeks. These increases are just guidelines and will vary with your level of training.

There is more to the progressive overload training principle than just doing more sets, more reps, and lifting more weights, but if you’re currently experiencing a plateau and not making any strength gains, it is time to check whether you are trying hard enough and doing the bare basics of progressive overload.

A real world example of progressive overload strength training

Both my arms and lats were weak body parts at one point in time. I was unable to do chin-ups and the weight I used on barbell curls was pathetic.

If you can do chin-ups without jerking your body upwards and/or use your arms too much to lift your body upwards, it is a good sign that your lats are pretty strong. And I wanted strong lats. So I set a goal for myself; I wanted to be able to do at least one chin-up without assistance.

At the time, I used to train at home and owned a barbell and dumbbell set. I also had two equally tall wardrobes, across which I could place my steel barbell and do chin-ups; I had my own homemade chin-up bar.

Every other day I would try to do one chin-up. At first, my bodyweight was too heavy for me to pull up, so I had to use my legs a little bit to help me do at least half a rep.

After 1 week, I did not need the assistance of my legs anymore. I could do half a rep on my own. But after that half rep, my lats would be totally exhausted. This was a good sign that my intensity was high enough, despite the fact that I was doing just 1 exercise and 3 sets of half a rep.

After 2 weeks, I was able to do 1 full rep on my homemade chin-up bar. Can you imagine my excitement going from weakling to being able to pull up my own bodyweight? During those workouts, I was not able to do 3 sets, but had to reduce my sets to just 1, because again, my lats were totally exhausted after that 1 set of 1 full rep.

For the next 2 weeks, I could only do that 1 set of 1 rep, and then I suddenly got a burst of strength increase in my 5th week. I was suddenly able to do 3 reps in a row for 1 set. And from then on, my strength only kept increasing as I fought to do more and more sets and reps, while taking enough rest in between workouts.

After 8 weeks I went back to the gym, jumped on the chin-up bar for the first time and did 8 reps in a row. I can still remember the stares I got, because everyone knew how weak I was in my arms and lats, so could not believe what they were seeing.

Conclusion

Progressive overload training is absolutely necessary to get bigger and stronger. Do it correctly, and you’ll see phenomenal strength gains in a short period of time.

The key is to increase the weight on every exercise whenever you can. In my case, I had only one weight to work with; my bodyweight. So the only progressive training technique I could use was to increase reps.