I’m in a weird situation with pull-ups and I’m trying to understand what’s actually missing physically.
I’m 1.80m, currently around 86kg (was ~90kg two months ago), and still can’t do 1 strict pull-up from a dead hang. What frustrates me is that I don’t feel completely weak overall in the upper body, which makes the disconnect hard to understand mentally.
A few things about my current level:
- I can hang from the bar for around 45–50 seconds.
- I can do controlled negatives.
- I can slightly “depress” the shoulders / engage the scapulas.
- I can initiate the pull a little bit, but I stall just below the bar.
- The hardest part by far is producing force from the fully stretched dead-hang position.
The biggest issue is that just hanging with fully extended arms already feels very demanding on my strength output. By the time I actually try to pull, it feels like most of my force capacity is already gone.
People often say:
“Use your back,”
“Engage your scapulas,”
“Pull elbows to hips,” etc.
But for me the limitation feels more basic than technique. It feels like I simply lack force production in the bottom range under full bodyweight.
So I’m wondering:
- Did anyone else experience this exact “dead-hang weakness” phase?
- Was the solution mainly assisted pull-ups / heavy lat work / bodyweight reduction / frequency?
- How long did it take before the first clean rep happened?
I’m especially interested in people who started from true zero pull-ups, not people who already had 5–6 reps naturally.