Have you ever met a guy who could do 20 dead hand pullups and did not have a six-pack?

Of all the branches of the US Armed Forces, the Marine Corps stands out by its dogged insistence on high pullup standards. Today, to max out the PFT scores young jarheads have to put up, women and men respectively, 12 and 23 reps. Respect.

May I suggest that Corps drops the additional “abs” test (sit-ups in the past, later crunches and today, a plank as an option)? If you can ace the USMC pullup test, you can max out the same with the “abs” test while being half asleep. On the other hand, your ability to crank out crunches or hold the plank has exactly zero correlation with your pullup ability.

Pullups are among the best abdominal exercises in existence. After measuring the midsection muscles’ electrical activity in dozens of resistance exercises, abdominal and full body, researcher Bret Contreras commented: “…the most shocking result of this entire experiment was the level of rectus abdominis activity elicited by a bodyweight chin-up! It beat out any other abdominal exercise, weighted exercises and all, in mean and peak rectus abdominis activity. Chin-ups are ultimate “anti-extension” exercise for the low back. Some lifters let their lower back arch excessively, which is not only unsafe, but sub-optimal. If they brace their lower back and keep a straight line from their shoulders to knees, the core musculature has to work very hard to prevent the low back from extending.”

On the other side of the coin, abdominal weakness is the reason many people are unable to do a single pullup, no matter how many lat pulldowns, rows, and curls they do. Which is why, before you touch the high bar, we will have you develop at least a budding six-pack. Our exercise of choice is the gymnastic hollow position and related drills. This way you will not only get your abs strong but will also learn how to use them in the pullup.