IMPROVE SPEED, POWER, AND NEURO DRIVE WITH THIS EXERCISE CREATED BY A FOREMOST AUTHORITY IN SPINAL BIOMECHANICS.
By Brian Carroll
In May of 2013, I met Dr. Stuart McGill, who, in short, saved my athletic career. I had a badly damaged back and was on the way out of elite powerlifting. He helped me start from ground zero, rebuild back to 100 percent, and in the process taught me what being a true athlete is. McGill not only helped me regain my lower-back athleticism and become pain free, he also taught me how to get more bang for my buck with newer and better versions of exercise that I’d been doing for decades. In short, he taught me to critically think before I did anything in the gym, period. Once I was able to start training hard again, I went back to Ontario, Canada, for a follow-up with Dr. McGill. This was the session where I learned the McGill pull-up (my name for it, not his). In short, these are pull-ups performed with 100 percent effort, as a way to generate maximum neuro drive. They have become one of the best ways I know to improve back strength and overall development while minimizing injury. Doing sets of 10 pull-ups at a bodyweight of 250-plus pounds can be risky for the tendons of your pecs, lats, and biceps. Fatigue is typically the culprit with these types of injuries. What McGill advocates are sets of one or two reps at a time, but with maximum force and explosion with each and every rep. The problem with doing multiple reps at a time in a traditional manner is you can’t exert 100 percent effort and force with sets of five, seven, or 10. You might start off at 100 percent, but you’ll end up closer to 50 percent as you close in on failure.
McGill has seen tremendous improvements in athletes’ ability to do reps on the pull-up in as little as one month. If you’re a tactical athlete (law enforcement, military, firefighter, etc.) who is tested on your pull-up count, this is a good way to build your pull-up volume and have it ready for test days when you need it. For those who aren’t tested on their pull-ups, it’s a great way to add high-quality volume to the movement. I’m currently at about 20 sets of one rep at this point, and I feel great. I usually do these anywhere from two to three times per week as part of my warm-up. I feel that these wake my body and my brain for the work that’s to come on the particular training day, and I feel that I have become faster and more explosive overall. On dead lift day, I start by using them as a warm-up and then I do 10 to 20 singles after my main deadlift work is done. I feel it’s been huge for my trap, rhomboid, and lat development, especially coming off a serious injury where I couldn’t train hard for two years. This efficient training helped make up for lost time.