reckonerAssisted pull-up
A pull-up with a counterweight under your knees. The machine takes part of your bodyweight off you, so the number you pin is help rather than load, and getting stronger means that number coming down. It trains the same lats, upper back and biceps a pull-up does, at a share of your weight you can move properly for a full set.
Palms away, wrists straight in the hang.
- Pattern
- Vertical pull
- Trains
- Lats, upper back, biceps
- Kit
- Machine assisted pull up
- Loading
- Assistance that comes off as you get stronger
- Reckoner prescribes
- 4 sets of 6 to 10 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 5 kg less help once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Moderate
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder, elbow
Muscles worked
How to do it
Pin the help before you climb on
Set the stack to the number your plan gives you. More plates is more help and an easier set, which is the opposite of every other machine in the gym, so read it twice. Then step up and kneel on the platform, or stand on it if your machine is built that way.
Hang from straight arms
Palms away, hands a little wider than your shoulders, wrists straight rather than bent over the handles. Let your arms go long, then pull your shoulder blades down so you are hanging from your back and not from your joints.
Drive the elbows toward your ribs
Lead with the elbows and bring your chest up toward the bar until your chin clears it. Measured on the unassisted pull-up this movement builds toward, the lats worked hardest of every muscle tested and the biceps came next1.
Lower all the way, under control
Come down until your elbows are straight again and your shoulder blades have risen. Pooled comparisons of full and partial range training favor the full range on every outcome, slightly but consistently2.
What goes wrong
Reading the stack the wrong way
Adding plates to make the set harder makes it easier. The number on the pin is how much of you the machine is carrying, so a stronger week is a smaller number.
Riding the platform at the bottom
Drop fast and the counterweight catches you and throws you back up, so the hardest part of the rep is done by the machine. Lower under control and start each pull from a still, straight arm hang.
Letting the knees drift forward
The hips pike, the platform tilts, and the pull turns into a lean back and a row. Keep your body under the bar, knees below your hips and trunk upright, so the pull stays vertical like the pull-up it stands in for.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 30 kg of help, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 x 6 at 30 kg of help | More reps 6 → 7 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 4 x 7 at 30 kg of help | More reps 7 → 8 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 4 x 8 at 30 kg of help | More reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 4 x 9 at 30 kg of help | More reps 9 → 10 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 4 x 10 at 30 kg of help | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 10 at 30 kg of help | Load up 30 kg → 25 kg of helpYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the machine takes 5 kg less of your weight, down to 25 kg of help. Less help is more of you doing the work, so the reps come down to six. You are now working 6 to 10. The lighter week is over, so this is back to four sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
Why does the number go down when I get stronger?
Because it is help. Reckoner knows this is the one movement in its library that runs the other way, so a week where every set reaches the top of the range takes help off, and a week where the first set falls well short puts some back rather than making the next one harder. On the lightest pin the stack has there is nothing left to take off, so the reps climb instead.
Assisted machine or lat pull-down?
Both train the same overhead pull. In one lab comparison of the pull-up against three alternatives, none of them reproduced the pull-up's pattern of muscle activity in people who could already do ten pull-ups, and in those who could not, a kneeling pull-down came closest, closer than the assisted machine3. It was one small study, so read it as a reason not to worry about which one your gym has rather than as a ranking. Tell Reckoner what your gym holds and it picks one you can run.
What happens when I can do a real pull-up?
The assisted pull-up shares its swap group with the pull-up and the chin-up, so either can take its place when your plan is rebuilt. Until then, the smaller the number on the pin, the closer you are.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. On this machine easing means more help, so a stack already giving all the help it has leaves nothing to add, and the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Youdas and colleagues, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2010. Surface electromyographic activation patterns and elbow joint motion during a pull-up, chin-up, or Perfect-Pullup rotational exercise twenty-five participants measured across three bar pulls, with average activation highest in the latissimus dorsi, at 117 to 130 per cent of a maximal isometric contraction, followed by the biceps brachii at 78 to 96 per cent, then the infraspinatus, lower trapezius, pectoralis major, erector spinae and external oblique
- Wolf and colleagues, International Journal of Strength and Conditioning, 2023. Partial vs full range of motion resistance training: a systematic review and meta-analysis a meta-analysis reporting a trivial standardized mean difference of 0.12 in favor of full range training, with every outcome favoring full range but all effects between trivial and small
- Hewit, Jaffe and Crowder, Journal of Physical Fitness, Medicine and Treatment in Sports, 2018. A Comparison of Muscle Activation during the Pull-up and Three Alternative Pulling Exercises forty-one college-aged men and women performing a bodyweight pull-up, a seated and a kneeling lat pull-down and an assisted pull-up machine, the three alternatives at 80 per cent of bodyweight, with no alternative replicating the pull-up's order of activation in those able to do ten or more pull-ups, and the kneeling pull-down the only one to replicate it in those who could not