It is considered, that the second most often performed bodyweight exercise is a pull-up. Many people even challenge themselves every day, while trying to outperform the previous day’s result. The amount of pull-ups for beginners usually depends on different factors such as age, fitness level and health condition.
What is a Pull Up?
Have your heard of this exercise before? What are pull ups good for? We will answer this and some other questions in this article.
To begin with, pull-ups are an upper-body strength exercise. It is classified as a closed-circuit movement. What does it mean? It means that the body is suspended by the arms and then pulled upward. As the body is pulled toward the bar, the elbows are brought toward the torso and bent. Forty years ago this exercise was also called a pull-up. Let me explain. When you do a pull-up, your chin is over the bar. And the pull-up is more related to the position of the arms, while the pull-up is performed with the arms pronated.
How Many Pull Ups Should I be Able to Do?
If you already know how to perform a basic pull-up, you will ask yourself: how many pull-ups should I be able to do? Well, there is a lot of different information on this topic. We can give you an approximate amount of how many pull-ups is good for you. How many pull-ups a day is good for you?
- Kids between 6 to 12 years old should be able to perform 1-2 repetitions of a pull-up.
- Teenagers 13 to 18 years old can do around 4-8 repetitions.
- Adult men should be able to perform 6-8 pull-ups when doing one for the first time. Well-trained person should be able to perform 12-15 reps.
- Adult women should be able to perform between 1-4 and a well-trained female has been known to do about 5-10.
- According to that information, you should be able to do 5-10 pull-ups if you are an adult and 2-8 if you are under 18.
Obviously, it is necessary to know that the average fitness level of a male and females has slowly declined over recent years. Most people are generally less fit than it was 10-15 years ago. A lot of fitness tests have lowered the number of pull-ups required to pass because of that.
How Many Pull-Ups Should I Do to Build Muscle?
See, a lot of this depends on your fitness level and how many pull-ups you can do. We dig into it and found that there have been some studies. Now we know that the best number of pull-ups to build muscles is between 7-9. It can be possible when you use a three-set workout two times a week. Also, there is a little controversial data. Let’s have a look: the military recommends 25 to 50 pull-ups a day through small repetition sets. For example, 3×10 or 3×15. Sadly, most people can hardly reach that quantity. So the study above is the most realistic for the general person. We have to remember that our body needs to recover. It is necessary for our health too. That’s why, if you are doing this exercise daily, make sure you have about 2 days off a week to allow adaption to occur. This way you will see a much faster progression.
How Many Pull Ups Should I Do a Day?
Now you will probably have another question. How many pull-ups should I do daily? You need to perform your usual number of pull-ups daily. For example, if you can do 5 pull-ups at once, you can slowly increase that number. Try to do 12-15 pull ups per day and in a while, you will be able to boost the quality and amount of exercises. You need to do about 2-3 sets every day.
How Many Pull Ups is Good for my Weight?
Weight plays a big part in how many pull-ups you can do. Did you know? The less your weight, the easier you will do pull ups. Why are pull-ups so hard? As a matter of fact, heavier people struggle to do lots of repetitions. They need to spend countless hours lifting weights to reach the result.
How many pull-ups should I be able to do with my weight? Moreover, you should know how to lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks. There is an online website for strength-related calculators and training provides a well-researched calculator to help you find out how many pull-ups you should be able to do for your weight. It is called strength level. We think that strength level is the most accurate website, based on the studies done comparing reps and weight together.
Pull Up Chart by Age
| 💪Age | 🏃♀️ Male | 🏃♂️ Female |
| ⚡️5-12 | 1-2 | 1-2 |
| 👆13-18 | 4-8 | 2-3 |
| ⭐️18-30 | 6-10 | 3-5 |
| 👌30-50 | 4-8 | 2-4 |
| 👍50+ | 2-6 | 2-3 |
Conclusion
How many pull-ups can the average person do? Good news: you can improve your fitness with some simple exercises and variations of push-ups. Then you will be able to perform the average number of push-ups for your age group and health condition. Push-ups not only strengthen the pecs but also engage the deltoids, biceps and triceps, and quadriceps of the legs and activate several groups of core muscles. The information in this article is introductory. So, please, ask your doctor before you start training. Some athletes also can do one arm pull up and know about dead hang benefits.
Nina Burkovskaya is a senior content writer at Raisetwice since 2020. She has 12 years of yoga experience and 5 years experience of motivational coaching. On a free time loves to read biographies of the famous people and go for a walk with her dog.