Archer Pull-Up

What the archer pull-up actually trains

An archer pull-up is a wide grip pull-up in which you pull your chest towards one hand while the other arm straightens out along the bar, so that most of the load falls on a single side.

The latissimus dorsi and teres major on the pulling side do the bulk of the work, with the biceps and brachialis flexing the elbow, the rhomboids and middle trapezius retracting the shoulder blade, and the forearms holding on. The abs and obliques work to stop the body rotating and swinging under an off centre load.

It is best understood as a progression, not as a back exercise you would pick on its own merits.

The honest description is that this is something like two thirds of a one arm pull-up on the working side, with the extended arm supplying the rest. That extended arm is not decoration. It presses down into the bar and it can give you as much or as little help as you allow, which is both the appeal of the movement and its main weakness. The assistance is unmeasured, so an archer pull-up on a good day and an archer pull-up on a tired day can be quite different exercises.

What it buys you is a way to load one side heavily without having to hang from a single hand. If the one arm pull-up is a goal you genuinely hold, this bridges a gap that very little else fills as well.

What it does not buy you is much size. Youdas and colleagues measured activation across pull-up and chin-up variations and found broadly similar patterns between them, and the archer version does not recruit anything that a hard set of weighted pull-ups misses. It is harder to perform, which is not the same as being a better stimulus, and the number of decent reps you get from a set is small.

Setting up and executing

Take a grip roughly one and a half times shoulder width, wider than you would use for a normal pull-up. The width is what gives the far arm somewhere to go.

Hang with the shoulder blades set down and the abs braced so the legs stay quiet.

Pull towards one hand rather than straight up the middle, letting the opposite arm straighten out along the bar as you rise. Keep that straight arm loaded rather than limp; it is a brake and an assist, not a passenger.

Bring your chin level with the working hand and pause for a beat.

Lower under control over two to three seconds all the way back to a full hang, then repeat towards the other side.

The mistakes that cost you the most

Letting the far arm bend is the fault that quietly removes the point of the exercise. If both elbows flex, you are doing a slightly asymmetric pull-up. The far arm stays straight, and if it cannot, the movement is currently too hard.

Throwing the body sideways is the second. The shift should be pulled, not swung. Momentum makes the rep count go up and the training effect go down, and it also puts the shoulder of the extended arm into a position it has no control over.

Cutting the hang short is common because the bottom is hard, and it is expensive here. Pallares and colleagues found full range training produced better strength and hypertrophy outcomes than partial range work, and on any pull-up the stretched bottom position is the part worth having.

Uneven sides accumulate silently. Alternate strictly and let the weaker side set the number.

And doing these before you can do strict pull-ups is the most common error of all. If eight clean two arm reps are not there, this will simply be a swinging half rep with a story attached.

Sets, reps and rest by goal

Low reps, full rest, and fewer sets than you would expect.

For muscle gain, three sets of four to eight per side with two minutes rest. For strength, four sets of three to five with three minutes. In a fat loss phase, three sets of five to eight with ninety seconds.

The count is per side, so a set of five each way is ten reps of near maximal effort. That set does not need company.

Progression is a problem here, because you cannot add small increments. You can add reps, slow the descent, or take a narrower grip so the far arm helps less. Adding weight usually just degrades the shift.

Schoenfeld and colleagues found a dose response between weekly hard sets and hypertrophy, which is precisely why this should not be your only back exercise. Pair it with rows and weighted pull-ups that let you accumulate work.

Refalo and colleagues found stopping a rep or two short of failure produces comparable growth to going all the way, and on a movement this technical the last rep is almost always the ugly one.

Where it fits in your split

First in a pull or back session, while you are fresh.

On push, pull and legs it opens pull day. On a bro split it opens back day. On an upper and lower split it takes the vertical pull slot. On a full body programme it only earns a place if the one arm pull-up is a goal you actually hold.

Skill dependent movements belong at the start of a session, because they are performed badly when tired and a badly performed archer pull-up is a swing. Put it before rows and before anything that fatigues your grip.

Frequency should stay low. Twice a week at most, and once is enough for most people. The limiting factor for the one arm pull-up is rarely muscle mass; it is the ability to produce force in a position you almost never occupy, and that improves with quality practice rather than with volume.

Treat it as the skill portion of a session and let normal pulling do the building.

Variations worth knowing

The ordinary pull-up is the better back exercise by a distance, and it should still make up the bulk of your vertical pulling.

The weighted pull-up progresses in small measurable steps, which the archer version cannot, and is the more sensible route if size is your aim.

An assisted one arm pull-up with a band or a towel gives you the same one sided pattern with help you can actually quantify and reduce over time.

The typewriter pull-up slides from side to side at the top rather than pulling from the bottom, which extends time under load in the shortened position.

The archer row on rings gives you the same shifted pattern horizontally, with the angle of your body acting as a dial you can turn.

And the one arm negative, lowering slowly from the top with a single hand, trains the target skill more directly than anything else on this list.

What the evidence says

Youdas and colleagues compared surface activation and elbow motion across pull-ups, chin-ups and rotating handle pull-ups, and found broadly similar recruitment patterns, which supports treating grip and hand position changes as adjustments rather than as different exercises.

Dickie and colleagues examined activation across pull-up variations and reported that the differences between them were modest, which is the mechanical reason the archer version is a skill progression rather than a superior stimulus.

Doma and colleagues compared chin-ups with lat pulldowns and found comparable patterns of muscle activity despite the difference in setup, which again suggests vertical pulling is more alike than the internet claims.

Pallares and colleagues found full range training beat partial range training for strength and hypertrophy, supporting the return to a complete hang between reps rather than the half hang most people default to.

Liao and colleagues reviewed unilateral against bilateral resistance training and found no consistent superiority for one sided work, which is a useful check on the idea that training one arm at a time is inherently more productive.

Schoenfeld and colleagues found a dose response between weekly hard sets and muscle growth, which explains why a couple of archer sets cannot carry a back programme.

Refalo and colleagues found stopping short of failure produces comparable growth, and on a movement where the final rep is where the swing appears, that permission is worth using.

Common questions

How much does the straight arm actually help?

More than most people admit, and the amount changes with fatigue. It is pressing down into the bar throughout, which is why an archer pull-up feels manageable when a one arm pull-up is nowhere close.

Is this better than a normal pull-up for back size?

No. Youdas and colleagues found pull-up variations recruit broadly similar patterns, so you are not accessing anything new. You get fewer quality reps and less total load, which is the wrong trade for hypertrophy.

When am I ready for these?

When eight strict, full range pull-ups are comfortable and you can control a slow descent. Before that, the shift will be a swing and both shoulders will be along for the ride.

How is this different from a typewriter pull-up?

The archer pulls from the bottom towards one hand; the typewriter reaches the top first and then slides sideways. If the one arm pull-up is your goal, the archer is the more useful of the two.

Will these get me a one arm pull-up on their own?

Unlikely. Combine them with one arm negatives, band assisted work and heavy weighted pull-ups. The archer covers the middle of that progression and very little of either end.