Three cues that fix most pull-up mistakes

The pull-up is the most useful and most butchered exercise in swimming dryland. It loads the pattern the stroke lives on, it needs almost no equipment, and within three reps most swimmers have turned it into a kipping, shrugging, chin-craning scramble for the bar. You rarely need a new exercise to fix that. You need a better cue, delivered before the set rather than after it.

Cue before you correct

Corrections given mid-set arrive too late — the athlete is already fatigued and already committed to the rep. A cue given before the first rep changes the whole set. Pick one, say it once, and let the swimmer own it for the full set rather than stacking three instructions on top of each other while they hang there.

It also helps to set the standard before anyone leaves the ground. Say what a good rep looks like — a full hang at the bottom, chin cleanly over the bar, and the same tempo on the last rep as the first — and then hold the set to it. Swimmers will chase a number if you give them one, so give them a quality standard instead and let the number be whatever it is that day.

These three come straight out of the Module 3 cue library, and between them they cover the large majority of what goes wrong at the bar. Each targets a different failure: the shrug, the rib flare, and the finish.

• "Pull your shoulders away from your ears." Fixes the shrug — the swimmer who initiates with the upper traps and never gets the lats involved.
• "Ribs down, squeeze your glutes." Fixes the arch — the swimmer whose ribs flare and legs drift forward, turning the pull-up into a swinging lean-back.
• "Drive your elbows into your back pockets." Fixes the finish — the swimmer who stalls at the halfway point and starts chasing the bar with their chin.

If a cue does not land within two sets, the exercise is probably too hard rather than the athlete being inattentive. Regress it: band-assisted reps, slow eccentrics from the top, or a ring row at an angle they can actually control. Strength earned in a good position transfers. Reps scrambled in a bad one just teach the shoulder a pattern you will have to coach out later.