Been doing pull-ups three days a week, 4 sets to failure each session, which is basically 4, 3, 2, 2. Hasn't moved since March. Bodyweight is stable, I sleep fine, and I'm not sore the next day. Everything I read says do more pull-ups but doing more pull-ups is clearly not working. What do people actually change at this point?
Not being sore the next day isn't necessarily a problem, but four sets to failure three times a week and no soreness at all makes me wonder about the rep quality. Are you going full dead hang at the bottom and chin clearly over at the top? Half reps stall exactly like this.
Full hang yes, top is honest on the first two and probably gets sketchy on the last ones.
Also add weighted negatives once a week. Step up, take 5-8 seconds to lower, repeat for 4-5 singles. You can handle far more load eccentrically than concentrically and it builds the top-end strength that unsticks a low max.
Add rows. Heavy inverted rows or ring rows twice a week build the mid-back mass that pull-ups need and that pull-ups alone don't develop well at low rep counts. It's the most common missing piece I see.
Boring answer but check your grip. If your hands are giving out before your back is done, everything above is irrelevant. Time a dead hang — if you can't hold 45 seconds, grip is your limiter.
@treadmill_tara · 6mo ago · 3 replies
Stop training to failure every set. That's almost certainly the whole problem — at 4 reps max, going to failure means your total quality volume per session is nine or ten reps, and most of those are grindy bad reps that fatigue you without building much.
Switch to greasing the groove style: sets of 2 (half your max), lots of them, spread through the day or across the session with 2-3 minutes rest. Aim for 25-30 total reps in a session, all of them fast and clean. Do that four or five days a week for three weeks and retest. Almost everyone stuck in the 3-5 range breaks out with this.
The reason it works is that at low rep maxes you're limited by neural efficiency and connective tissue readiness far more than by muscle size, and both respond to frequency rather than to intensity.
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@barbell_bri · 5mo ago
Three weeks in and I hit 7. Never would have guessed that doing easier sets more often was the answer.
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@treadmill_tara · 6mo ago
That's the usual jump. Now hold there for a few weeks before you start chasing failure again — most people immediately go back to grinding and stall at 7 instead of 4.
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