Scapular Pull-Up

How to do it

1. Hang from a pull-up bar with an overhand grip and straight arms.
2. Let the shoulders rise fully toward your ears so the shoulder blades travel upward.
3. Without bending the elbows, pull the shoulder blades down and together.
4. Your body will rise an inch or two — that is the whole range.
5. Hold briefly at the top of that small movement.
6. Let the shoulders rise again under control before the next repetition.

Common mistakes

• Bending the elbows. The moment the elbow bends this is a partial pull-up, and the scapular movement it was meant to isolate disappears into it.
• Chasing height. An inch or two is the range; the movement happens between the shoulder blade and the ribs and there is nowhere else for it to go.
• Skipping the top of the hang. Letting the shoulders rise fully is half the exercise — it is the position the pull-down is being trained from.
• Doing it as a warm-up only. It trains scapular depression under bodyweight, which is what the bottom of every pull-up depends on, and that is worth loading rather than only rehearsing.

Muscles worked

Primary

• Lower TrapeziusTraps

Secondary

• Lats
• Rhomboids
• Middle TrapeziusTraps