Here is how you can workout your lats when you have injured your hand, wrist, elbow, or broken your arm. You might think that pullups are impossible when you cant use your arm but with a little creativity, they are easy to do! All you need is a pullup bar and some hanging ab straps. These are much more difficult than normal pullups. Even if you can normally crank out a few dozen pullups, you will find these challenging and probably get DOMS from doing these. You might even consider giving them a try if you are not injured :) Lets cover some important points of the hands-free pullup.
- Shoulder packing! Because these are so difficult, most people have even more tendency to let their shoulders go up and touch their ears – dont do this! Keep your shoulders down and back.
- Put the hanging ab straps under the elbows, not the armpits. If you put them under the armpits its too easy to cheat and you dont get as much out of the exercise. Obviously, make sure enough of the arm is in the straps so that you dont risk falling out though!
- Dont go down all the way. After trying these you will see why. If you try to do a full range of motion pullup you would slip out of the hanging ab straps and fall to a crumpled heap on the floor. Its very easy to sense how far you down you can go without slipping, you will only be using about 1/2 – 1/3 your normal range of motion. Dont worry though, thats what makes these so awesome! The partial reps keep your lats in the position where they are under maximum load so they are really difficult!
- Use forced negatives! When you cant do any more of these no-hand pullups, using your feet, push yourself back up to the top position and then lower yourself slowly for 2-3 more forced negative reps. Killer!!!