How Many Pull-Ups Can the Average Man Do? What’s Good?
When I surveyed our YouTube audience, half could do 0–9 pull-ups, half could do 10–19 pull-ups, and a handful could do 20+. Quite a few guys were stuck at 0. There were almost 600 responses, which was enough to be confident in the results, but YouTube surveys are pretty limited. I went deeper with our newsletter.
The average man on our Bony to Beastly newsletter can do 10–14 pull-ups. 30% of them could do more, and another 30% could do less.
Most of these guys were between 20 and 60 years old, with the most common age being about 35. The vast majority of them are naturally thin, virtually all of them are natural, and most lift weights, do cardio, eat well, and feel good. These are healthy guys who are interested in fitness.
I then segmented them based on their lifting experience. At first glance, the results are strange:
- No Lifting Experience: 10–14 pull-ups
- First year of lifting: 5–9 pull-ups
- 1–2 years of lifting: 10–14 pull-ups
- 3–5 years of lifting: 10–14 pull-ups
- 5–10 years of lifting: 10–14 pull-ups
- 10+ years of lifting: 10–14 pull-ups
Why are guys who don’t lift weights better at pull-ups than people who do?
And why aren’t people getting better at chin-ups after that first year?
Why Can Non-Lifters Do More Pull-Ups?
I have three ideas to explain why lifters aren’t better at pull-ups than non-lifters:
- Maybe the non-lifters are doing callisthenics. Maybe they’re practicing pull-ups even more often than the lifters.
- Perhaps the non-lifters don’t know how to do pull-ups properly. Maybe they aren’t lowering themselves all the way down into a dead hang, with their arms fully extended. Maybe they’re swinging themselves up. Maybe the lifters are using a stricter technique.
- Maybe the lifters are more muscular and thus need to lift heavier bodies. I run Bony to Beastly, so our newsletter has plenty of thin guys on it. These thin guys gain muscle over time, growing heavier.
Why Don’t Lifters Get Better At Pull-Ups?
When I was a new lifter, I could do around 12 pull-ups. Now, fourteen years later, I can do about 15. That means I’ve added less than one pull-up every four years. That seems pitiful.
However, I’ve gained almost 70 pounds of lean mass, meaning I’m lifting 70 more pounds with every pull-up. I’m also going twice as deep, sinking all the way down to a dead hang at the bottom of every repetition. And my technique has gotten smoother. I’m not heaving and kipping myself up.
I’m far better at pull-ups than I used to be. It’s just that you can’t see it reflected in the number of pull-ups I can do.
What’s An Impressive Number of Pull-Ups?
Most fit people will think it’s impressive when you can do 15+ pull-ups with good technique. Doing more than 15 reps usually has less to do with overall strength and fitness and more to do with being specialized for pull-ups: more technique optimization (such as quarter reps or kipping) and a lighter body weight (less fat but also less muscle).
How to Get Better At Pull-Ups
The first step is to learn how to do pull-ups with proper technique. You can do them overhand (pull-ups), underhand (chin-ups), with a neutral grip, with an angled grip, or while using gymnastic rings. There are subtle differences between the different variations, but they all work your back, biceps, and forearms.
If you’re using pull-ups to build muscle, you can do them 2–3 times per week and take most of your sets to failure. But the best way to get more reps is to practice your pull-ups more often while keeping your sets easy and explosive:
- Do pull-ups 3–4 times per week. You could do them every other day. That way, you get some rest, but you also get plenty of practice.
- Stop at least a few reps away from failure. If you can do 5 pull-ups, do sets of 1–2 reps. If you can do 10 pull-ups, stop at 4–6 reps. Keep the sets easy. Focus on lifting properly, athletically, and explosively, trying to accelerate yourself through the range of motion.
- Do 3–6 sets per workout. You want enough sets to get some good practice in, and you want a good muscle-building stimulus, but you need to watch out for overuse injuries in your elbows.
- Make sure the pull-ups feel good on your elbows. Use an angled grip if you need to. Gymnastic rings are another good option. Your muscles will benefit from more frequent training, but it’s easy to get overuse injuries if your elbows aren’t happy with your technique.
Alright, that’s it for now.
If you’re curious, I’ve got more articles about strength standards:
- Weight lifting strength standards
- How much can the average man squat?
- How much can the average man bench?
- How much can the average man deadlift?
- How much can the average man overhead press?
Shane Duquette is the co-founder of Outlift, Bony to Beastly, and Bony to Bombshell. He's a certified conditioning coach with a degree in design from York University in Toronto, Canada. He's personally gained 70 pounds and has over a decade of experience helping over 10,000 skinny people bulk up.
I can 100% confirm this. Bulking up and getting stronger does not mean you can do much mure pullups. Leg muscles are heavy.
Shane,
I like your stuff but your conclusions about how many pull-ups “the average man” can do seem off base. It sounds to me that these stats pertain to your average reader, but your readers are a specific sub-set of men, many of whom are naturally skinny like you and me. The average man in North America is overweight and unlikely to be a frequent gym-goer. I would venture a guess that most studies with more diverse sample populations of men would come up with a much lower number. I think it would be wise for you to change the languaging in this article so the conclusions are not misleading. What you say about pull-up numbers not necessarily tracking with strength is interesting but I don’t think it tells us much about the average man.
I bet your theory about form explains a lot. It took me a while to get “chest to bars” for example; how I’ve defined pull up has changed over time. But maybe I’m just making excuses for my own PR not changing much lol.
Hah, that could be. Sometimes it’s easier to come up with theories about why we’re not getting stronger than it is to get stronger 😛
Progression in pullups does have a diminishing return over time unless one tweaks what one means by progression. I know at present, I perform 100 pullups twice weekly as a back warmup (on chest/back/shoulder days), and I’m not “light” or short (6’4″, 205lbs, <10% BF, 48-yo male). Although the movement seems easier for lighter and shorter body types, there are always exceptions based on the nuances of one's build (swimmer-type, gymnast-type, boxer-type, etc., that speaks to muscle distribution and other nifty physio-mechanical interplay).
The initial outlay of going from 5 to 10, can be relatively quick to progress. From 10 to 25 a bit longer, 25 to 50 even longer, etc. But, at the point one is able to do 100 pullups in a session (not in a single set!), the body adaptation has been optimized for performing the movement.
Adding a weight belt is one way to optimize what pullups can do at that quantity, but also simply modifying the set/rep equation so that it isn't 10×10, but less sets and more reps. More effectively I find (YMMV) is to reduce the time required, so I give myself a time limit of doing 100 in 10 minutes or less when it used to take about 15 minutes. Yeah, that takes some rest-pause, and maybe one can bang out 16 in a row, but then just 8 the next, maybe 11 the next, etc., but it has to total 100 in 10 minutes one way or another.
Apart from elbows, be careful with the shoulders as well. I haven't experienced any issues, but can tell that the range of motion can put some strain there (especially on the same day as doing proper form lat prayers). Also, I would never entwine pullups on arms day… Although biceps recruitment on the pullup is less than the chinup, activation is still there and might limit the ROI on doing arms the same day.