First Pull-Up

A pull-up count is useless as a starting point, because a beginner's count is zero and zero says nothing about how far away the first rep is. So the tool asks for three things that all move before that rep does: how long you can hang, how many inverted rows you can hold form on, and whether you can lower yourself under control. Between them they separate grip and shoulder blade control from back strength, which are the two places people get stuck.

The rules are fixed. One full rep puts you in Phase 4. Three or more controlled negatives puts you in Phase 3. Either a negative you can hold or 8 inverted rows puts you in Phase 2. A hang of 10 seconds or more with fewer than 8 rows is Phase 1. Anything under a 10 second hang is Phase 0. They run in that order, so the strongest marker you have decides the phase. A short hang does not drag you back down a phase, but it does add hang work to every session until you clear 20 seconds, because you cannot pull on a bar you cannot hold.

ACSM's progression stand puts novices at 2 to 3 resistance sessions a week and describes progression as gradually added stress rather than a jump [2]. Their 2026 overview of 137 reviews adds that strength responds to heavy loads through a full range for 2 to 3 sets, and that eccentric overload is one of the things that moves hypertrophy [5]. The phase lengths here apply that to a single movement: 3 to 5 weeks for the hang, 4 to 6 to build the row, 6 to 10 for negatives and assisted work, 4 to 6 to close the gap. Two days a week stretches each figure by about 40 percent, because weekly work is what drives the change and two sessions is less of it. These are estimates from typical beginner progress. They are not a measurement of you.

You can lower more than you can lift. Roig and colleagues pooled 20 randomised trials and found that eccentric work performed at higher intensity than the matched concentric work produced larger total and eccentric strength gains, with the gains specific to how they were trained [3]. For a pull-up that is convenient: the lowering half is the only way to load the whole movement at full bodyweight before you can do one. Ronai and Scibek's exercise technique piece is the reference used here for the phases of the rep itself and for which variations count as a progression rather than a different exercise [1].

The assist target is 30 to 50 percent of your bodyweight, which is the amount of help that turns a movement you cannot do into sets of five you can. It converts straight from the bodyweight you entered, then matches to a band width, because width is the only property that means roughly the same thing at every brand. Colour does not. The match is made against the figures brands print, left uncorrected, because those are the figures on the product page you will be reading. They do read optimistically: Uchida and colleagues measured flat Thera-Band therapy bands against the manufacturer's own reference table and found real tension 13 to 44 percent below it depending on the colour [4]. That study tested flat therapy bands, not the loop bands this page recommends, so take the direction of the bias from it and not the size. In practice the honest read of any printed range is its lower half, which is why the result tells you to take the next width up when your target lands near the top of one. What comes out is a range to start looking in, not a number you will feel.

It will not give you a date. It prints a week range, and the range is wide because it has to be. It will not tell you your maximum, because it never watched you lift. It will not diagnose an elbow or a shoulder, and pain in either during pulling work is a reason to stop and ask a clinician, not a reason to add a set. It knows nothing about your sleep, your food, or which way your bodyweight is going, and bodyweight is half of this lift. And it deliberately does not tell you to lose weight to get the rep sooner. That is true arithmetic and a bad piece of coaching to hand a stranger you have never met, so it stays out.

Any partner link on this page is chosen after the plan is finished, from the two equipment questions you answered, and it is written into the page below the answer. Nothing about a partner reaches the phase rules, the week counts, the sessions or the band maths. If you have a bar and a band, no link renders at all.