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Pull-ups and Dips Are NOT for Beginners

For most people, these exercises will only lead to frustration or injury… I'll show you what to do instead so that you'll automatically be able to perform them perfectly later on.

Generally, the fitness industry portrays bodyweight exercises as suitable for everyone and easy to perform.

Most people think that because no weights are used, these exercises are natural abilities that anyone can easily do.

It doesn’t help that many trainers also refer to them as beginner exercises.

So there’s this common set of beginner calisthenics or street workout exercises—push-ups, pull-ups, dips, various squats—that anyone can start with and quickly succeed at.

You also hear this in many videos with titles claiming these bodyweight basics are totally suitable for beginners, which is why many people dive into exercises like pull-ups and dips.

However, in my experience, this is far from the truth.

Even people who are well-trained and more experienced often can’t do proper pull-ups and dips, let alone beginners.

Think about why, for example, in CrossFit, they often do those dynamic pull-ups.

It’s because there’s momentum involved, and it’s easier to do many reps with it.

Where there’s momentum, in this case, there’s no full-range strength. To succeed, you have to transform the control and execute the exercise with proper technique.

Maintaining the dynamic technique allows for more reps, which people often reach faster than strict, properly executed pull-ups.

That brings me to the other important point: they wouldn’t be able to do as many strict pull-ups, even in the version where the chin clears the bar.

Not to mention that if they performed the full range of motion and touched the bar with their chest, it would be even harder.

So, this story already tells you a lot… we're trying to turn a non-beginner, spectacular exercise into a beginner exercise, but only through shortcuts, with questionable levels of success.

Those who start bodyweight training and attempt these exercises soon realize they aren’t as easy as they thought.

But they don’t know what to do next, and they believe the problem lies with them, or worse, they keep pushing and end up injured.

Dips, for example, frequently cause shoulder injuries due to insufficient shoulder mobility or a lack of proper scapular control and stability.

With pull-ups, it's often a lack of grip strength or incomplete execution, leaving people stuck, unable to progress, and they can't move on to exercises like the muscle-up.

Because of these issues, I've quickly come to the conclusion during my coaching career that pull-ups and dips need to be separated from the foundational process, and you should focus on other exercises first. That’s why I split this process in two.

After joint preparation—which, by the way, most people completely skip—we begin with push-ups and inverted rows as pushing and pulling exercises. Only after mastering these do we move on to dips and pull-ups.

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