reckonerBand assisted pull-up
A long band on the bar takes part of your weight, so you can train the whole pull before you can do one alone. It works the lats, the upper back and the biceps. Each step forward is a lighter band from your own list.
Dead hang, shoulders set, lower slowly.
- Pattern
- Vertical pull
- Trains
- Lats, upper back, biceps
- Kit
- Pull up bar, band
- Loading
- Your own bodyweight, with a band helping
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 5 to 8 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- A lighter band 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
Check the band, then hook it
Look the band over for small nicks and tears before you load it, and retire one that shows wear1. Pass it around the bar and back through itself, then pull it snug so it cannot slide along the bar.
Get in without a drop
Stand on a box or a bench, pull the band down and set it under the middle of one foot. Keep that foot flat and pressing down so the band cannot roll off. Lower yourself onto it under control until you are hanging.
Hang from your back
Palms away, hands a little wider than your shoulders. Straighten your arms, then pull your shoulder blades down, so you hang from your back and not from your joints.
Pull your chest toward the bar
Lead with your elbows and keep your legs quiet. Stop when your chin clears the bar. Your neck adds nothing, so leave it long.
Lower slowly to straight arms
Take your time on the way down and finish every rep with straight arms. Full range comes out ahead of partial range on most outcomes, by a small margin4.
What goes wrong
Bouncing out of the bottom
A band pulls according to how far it is stretched2, and the bottom of the rep is where it is stretched most. Drop in fast and the rebound hands you the start of the rep. Stop at straight arms, then pull.
Changing bands inside the session
It feels sensible when the last set gets hard. Reckoner only reads a step when every working set was on one band, so finish on the band you started with and let the reps fall.
Trading the pull for slow lowering
Lowering is good work and it is not the same work. Strength trained men showed more arm and chest activity going up than coming down3. Keep pulling reps in the session, and lower slowly on each one.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, 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 | 3 x 5 | More reps 5 → 6 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 6 | More reps 6 → 7 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 7 | More reps 7 → 8 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 8 | Next band Lighter bandEvery set reached the top of the range with good form, so you move to a lighter band. Less help, same reps. |
| 5 | 3 x 8 | 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 8 | Holding steady Same bandThe lighter week was for recovery, not a test, so nothing logged in it counts against this exercise. It stays where it was before the lighter week. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three 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
How much weight does a pull-up band take off?
There is no honest number. A band's pull changes as it stretches2, so it changes inside every rep. A color cannot tell you the tension precisely5, and when one maker's colors were measured, its published figures came out too high6. Reckoner never puts a weight on a band. Your own list, lightest to heaviest, is the scale.
When does Reckoner move me to a lighter band?
When every working set was on one band, at the top of your rep range, and you rated the lift Clean or Fair. Then it suggests the next lighter band from your list, and you can always choose a different one. Rough never moves you on, because progress is earned on good form.
Band or assist machine?
If your gym has the machine, Reckoner lists it ahead of the band, because a stack gives you help you can read as a number and a band does not. You can still swap to the band. Reckoner does not call either one the faster road to a first pull-up.
Similar movements
There is no load to ease on this lift, so Reckoner offers one of these the first time it stalls. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Rebecca Moore, Performance Health Academy, 2024. How to safely use elastic resistance in the clinic and at home clinical guidance to check a band before each use for small nicks and tears and to discard one that shows wear; the page carries no date of its own and 2024 is its site copyright
- Patterson and colleagues, Physical Therapy, 2001. Material properties of Thera-Band tubing force in elastic tubing changing with elongation, nonlinear in the first stretch and linear after 50 per cent elongation; an older paper kept because it measures a material property
- Dickie and colleagues, Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology, 2017. Electromyographic analysis of muscle activation during pull-up variations nineteen strength trained men, with higher brachioradialis, biceps and chest activity on the way up than on the way down in each pull-up variation
- 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 finding trivial to small differences that favor full range on most outcomes
- Thomas, Muller and Busse, Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 2005. Quantification of tension in Thera-Band and Cando tubing at different strains and starting lengths the statement that precise quantification using color coded bands is not possible; an older paper kept because it measures a material property
- Uchida and colleagues, Journal of Physical Therapy Science, 2016. Thera-Band elastic band tension: reference values for physical activity eight colors measured across ten elongations, with five colors differing from the maker's figures and those figures described as overestimates