Scapular Pull Ups: How to Do Them and Why Your Pull Up Needs Them

Most people who cannot do a pull up are not weak in the arms. They are stuck in the first inch, hanging with their shoulders jammed up around their ears while their biceps try to start a lift the back should have begun. The scapular pull up trains that first inch on its own, and it is the single most useful thing you can add to a pull up progression that has stalled.

The movement is small enough that it looks like nothing is happening. Hang from a bar with straight arms, pull your shoulder blades down and together, and your whole body rises maybe 5 to 8cm. No elbow bend, no swinging, no kipping. That tiny range is where a pull up starts, and it is the range almost nobody trains.

How to do a scapular pull up

You need a bar you can hang from with your feet clear of the floor, or bent knees if the ceiling is low. A doorway bar works; so do rings.

1. Hang properly first. Take an overhand grip a little wider than your shoulders, arms locked straight, and let yourself sink into a full dead hang. Your shoulders should feel like they are near your ears. That is the start position, not a fault.
2. Set your ribs. Tighten your abs slightly so your ribcage does not flare and your lower back does not arch. Legs together, toes pointed down, body quiet.
3. Pull the blades down. Without bending your elbows at all, drive your shoulder blades down your back and slightly together. Your chest lifts, your head rises a few centimetres, and your shoulders come away from your ears.
4. Hold the top. Squeeze for a full second. This is the position you want to own, because it is where every good pull up begins.
5. Lower under control. Let the blades slide back up over two seconds until you are in a full hang again. Do not just drop into it.

Muscles worked

The shoulder blade is not bolted to anything. It floats on your ribcage, held there by muscle, and every one of those muscles has a say in this exercise.

• Lower trapezius. The main event. It pulls the blade down the back, and it is chronically weak in anyone who spends the day at a desk. It also happens to be difficult to train with the arm below shoulder height, which is exactly why a hanging exercise is useful (lower trapezius EMG during exercises below ninety degrees of shoulder elevation).
• Middle trapezius and rhomboids. These retract the blade, bringing it towards the spine. Loaded scapular work produces high activity in both, and going heavier increases it further (scapular muscle activity at low and high intensities).
• Latissimus dorsi. Your lats attach to the bottom of the shoulder blade as well as the upper arm, so they contribute to the depression even with the elbow locked, and EMG work on the pull up shows the lat is already firing hard in the early phase of the lift (surface EMG activation patterns during the pull up and chin up).
• Serratus anterior. Works on the way back up, controlling the blade rather than letting it fly into your ear.

Grip and forearms come along for the ride, which is a bonus if hanging time is a limiter for you. Our guide to the dead hang covers building that separately.

Why bother

The obvious reason is the pull up. Train the first inch and the rest of the movement stops feeling like a mystery, because you finally have a stable platform to pull from rather than a shrug to fight through. Anyone stuck at zero reps should be doing these before they do another band-assisted rep.

The less obvious reason is what happens above your shoulders during the rest of your training. A shoulder blade that cannot slide down and back leaves the shoulder joint working in a compromised position, and that shows up in bench pressing, overhead work and the general low-grade ache of desk posture. Scapular pull ups are the cheapest fix I know for that, and they cost 90 seconds at the start of a session.

They also teach you to feel your back working, which is the thing beginners find hardest in every pulling exercise from the inverted row to the lat pulldown.

Common mistakes

• Bending the elbows. The most common one by far. Once the arms join in, the blades stop working and you are doing a bad quarter pull up. Lock the elbows and accept the tiny range.
• Going too fast. Bouncing through reps turns this into a swing. Two seconds up, one second held, two seconds down.
• Shrugging instead of depressing. If your shoulders rise towards your ears at the top, you have the direction backwards. Down and back, not up and in.
• Letting the ribs flare. Arching the lower back and pushing the ribcage forward fakes the movement. Keep the abs slightly braced so the change happens at the shoulder blade.
• Only ever doing them in a warm up. They work as an actual exercise. Load them with a weighted vest once bodyweight is comfortable and they stop being a token pre-session ritual.

Variations and progressions

• Bent-knee or foot-assisted. If a full hang is too much for your grip, keep your toes lightly on a box and take a fraction of the weight. You still get the pattern.
• Ring scapular pull ups. Rings let the hands rotate, so the shoulder finds a more natural path and the whole thing feels kinder on cranky joints. A set of gymnastic rings hung from a bar is the cheapest upgrade here.
• Isometric holds. Hold the top for 5, then 10, then 20 seconds. Brutal, and the fastest way to build the endurance you need at the bottom of a real pull up.
• Weighted scapular pull ups. Add 5kg to 10kg in a vest or between the feet once you can do 3 sets of 10 with a clean pause.
• Scapular push ups. The pressing mirror image, done in a plank position, training the serratus to protract rather than the traps to retract. Pair them for a shoulder blade that works in both directions.
• Inverted row with a scapular pause. Set a bar at hip height, hang underneath, and start each rep with a full second of shoulder blade retraction before the elbows bend.

Sets, reps and where to put them

Put scapular pull ups first in a pulling session, before your back is tired, and treat them as skill work rather than a finisher.

• Learning the movement: 3 sets of 8 slow reps, one second at the top, 2 or 3 times a week.
• Building towards a first pull up: 4 sets of 8 to 10, plus a 10 second top hold at the end of each set.
• Maintenance once you can do pull ups: 2 sets of 10 as part of the warm up, or a single weighted set of 8 on a back day.

If you are training at home, all you need is somewhere solid to hang from. Our best pull up bar UK guide covers doorway, wall-mounted and free-standing options, and once you can string together a few clean reps, the full pull up guide takes it from there. For the upper back work that supports all of this, face pulls are the obvious partner exercise.

Recommended reads

1. How to do a pull up
2. The dead hang: benefits and how to do it
3. The best pull up bars in the UK
4. Inverted row technique
5. The best gymnastic rings in the UK