Progressive Pulls: 2022

We’re Smarter Than When We First Wrote It

Olympic weightlifter Pyrros Dimas, shown in the featured image, in flight: this is how to do the power clean, bar pulled to pec height, feet airborne, full commitment to the pull.

When the pandemic closed commercial gyms nationwide, I received a lot of phone calls from trainees seeking alternative ways to train when deprived of all the progressive resistance training tools they took for granted: barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, machines, benches, and cables. One Californian, an intermediate-level fellow, called me for advice.

“How can I possibly get a good back workout without access to strength training equipment like a lat pulldown machine, no dumbbells, no T-bar row or pullover machines?! My entire back workout used machines, devices, tools and cables. All I have now is an Olympic barbell in my garage sitting on a concrete floor.”

“Losing access to a commercial gym will be the best thing that ever happened insofar as your back development.”

“What?!” he was flummoxed; he had come looking for consolation. “Do you understand?!” he said, irate. “The gym is freaking closed. How can I get any kind of a decent back workout?!”

“That barbell lying on your garage floor is all you need to obtain the best back workout of your life.”

One Barbell, One Floor, One Brutal Back Workout

It was then that I outlined for him Progressive Pulls, a back-breaking, ball-busting back routine: eight exercises done in a single session, every exercise using a barbell sitting on the floor, needing nothing else. The Progressive Pulls routine and strategy are based on an ancient article written by an iron icon.

Tommy Suggs and the Progressive Pulls Origin

The Progressive Pull routine was first described in an article penned by Tommy Suggs in Strength & Health magazine in the mid-1960s. Suggs, an elite nationally ranked Olympic weightlifter, outlined an “all pull” strategy that started with the lightest exercise using the lightest possible poundage, then worked through a succession of upward pulling exercises. By session’s end, every muscle on the back is decimated: traps, erectors, upper and lower latissimus dorsi, rhomboids and rear deltoids.

Progressive Pulls, with one exception, are all about pulling a barbell upward to various heights: lightest to heaviest, longest to shortest. Thirty years after Suggs documented the strategy, I updated the concept and expanded the exercise menu a bit, while holding true to the core idea. That was in 2000. Twenty-plus years later, I am smarter than when I wrote the year 2000 article. I would like to add further refinements to this classical concept, a back-building, strength-infusing method too effective and efficient to let die of neglect.

How Progressive Pulls Work

What is the best use of a barbell sitting on the floor? With zero gym equipment — no weight benches, no squat stands or racks, no machines, no nothing — you can get a savage back workout. Progressive Pulls improve both performance and physique when performed with technical control and enough recovery.

The first exercise, the overhead squat, is not a Progressive Pull. It is a warm-up, a highly specific warm-up done to prepare the shoulder girdle prior to snatches and cleans. The remaining seven exercises are pulling movements pulled to differing heights. Make haste slowly.

The Progressive Pull Menu

Overhead Squat

The lightest exercise, the overhead squat, uses a snatch grip. Start with a broomstick or PVC pipe. Ultra-light, ultra-deep squats are done holding a bar, stick or pipe overhead. Get loose and warm using the overhead squat for 2 to 3 sets. This improves shoulder flexibility, balance, and total-body readiness. It may take many sessions before the shoulders are loose enough to handle the empty 45-pound bar.

Power Snatch

Using a wide grip, pull a light weight from the floor to completely overhead in one motion. Dip the knees to catch the weight at arm’s length. The whole game is velocity and explosiveness. Limit reps to no more than three. Make small jumps. When the explosiveness fades on the third rep of a set, curtail the power snatch and move on to the power clean.

Power Clean

Narrow the grip to shoulder width. Pull the bar explosively to pec height and rack it on the shoulders. Sets of 2 to 3 reps are done with velocity. Do not rip or jerk the bar off the floor. Break the barbell from the floor under control, then accelerate to maximum velocity. Go up on the toes before dipping in the knees to rack the weight on the shoulders. When velocity on the third rep slows, you are done; move on to high pulls.

High Pull

Add poundage to the power clean bar and commence with high pulls. A high pull is tugged to belly-button height. Again, 3-rep sets are used and again, velocity is required. Despite being heavy, a high pull should never be made so heavy that it becomes a slow, extended deadlift. Make small weight jumps. Pull 3-rep sets until a rep stalls. Then you are done. Time to deadlift.

Deadlift

Add weight to the high pull bar and commence your first set of deadlifts. Three-rep sets are performed; sumo or conventional are both acceptable. Establish crisp technique on the lighter sets. Use 20- to 30-pound jumps per set, no more. Do not let technique disintegrate. Reps should be technically crisp in this heaviest exercise on the Progressive Pull menu. When technique breaks down on a third rep, quit.

The deadlift is the poundage apogee. Now we start peeling weight plates off the deadlift bar and continue to lift.

Heave

The deadlift bar is now sitting fully loaded. As we unload it, why not hit a few more sets to ensure hypertrophy and complete back decimation? Strip roughly 20% off the deadlift poundage. A heave is an extended deadlift. At this point in the session, you will have no more explosiveness, but you can still heave the barbell to belly-button height. A single 3-rep set is all that is required.

Bent-Over Row

Strip more weight off the barbell and perform one set to failure in the strict barbell bent-over row. A strict row requires the torso be held parallel to the floor. Do not dip and heave to start the row rep and do not lower the chest to meet the barbell. The torso is absolutely frozen from the start of the first rep until the end of the set. Make the mind-muscle connection: do not arm-pull rows; make the lats work.

Kirk Shrug

The final exercise in the Progressive Pull sequence is called the Kirk Shrug after Kirk Karwoski, the powerlifting superstar who popularized it. Use whatever poundage was used on the strict bent-over row. Stand erect with the weight, in the finished position of a deadlift, using a double-overhand grip. Start shrugging. Try to touch the ears with the shoulders on every rep.

Why Straps Belong in This Routine

I advise using lifting straps. I want to eliminate the grip as the limiting factor. The muscles of the back are able to keep repping after the loss of grip forces the curtailment of the set. The sheer volume of poundage pulled in a Progressive Pull workout is staggering. I get a lot of grief for my advocacy of lifting straps. The usual retort is, “I want to build my grip.”

My retort? I want to build my back and I want those extra growth-producing reps that straps enable. Grip work can be trained separately. Progressive Pulls are for attacking the back, traps, erectors, lats and posterior chain.

Sample Progressive Pull Routine

Hypothetical Progressive Pull routine for a man with a 315 x 1 deadlift:

Replenishment, Rest, and Weekly Placement

Immediately after training, drink a replenishment shake or eat a real post-training meal that matches the severity of the workout, your body size and your goals. I have used a double serving of John Parrillo’s 50-50 Plus mixed with whole raw milk. Today, readers should understand that raw milk carries food-safety risk and that pasteurized milk, water, or another tolerated liquid can be used instead. The larger point remains: after this degree of pulling, the body needs protein, carbohydrate, fluid, sodium, calories, and rest.

Optimally, I would suggest you then head to an all-you-can-eat buffet, or head home and grill a big steak, a perfect cheeseburger, a magnificent chunk of fish or a perfectly roasted chicken, plus vegetables galore. It is your duty to stuff your freaking face — assuming you have earned that meal, tolerate it, and your bodyweight goal allows it.

Then take a power nap. Fall into deep, effortless, restorative sleep. The power nap completes the growth cycle: slaughter the target muscles, feed the body amply, restore what has been depleted, sleep, recover, grow. Train the muscle, feed the muscle, rest the muscle, grow the muscle.

Hit Progressive Pulls once a week. Place them at the opposite end of the training week from once-weekly leg training. Please heed this advice: jump in using low poundage. While you could, and will be tempted to, start with higher weights based on current strength levels, there is a cumulative effect, a deep fatigue, that this volume of high-intensity training inflicts.

Best start modestly. Jump in well below capacity. Hone technique during these initial ultra-light sessions. Progressive Pulls do not really get serious until around the third week of a serious 10-week cycle. Use the first weeks to establish pristine technique. You will not survive if you under-eat or under-rest. This is how the Big Boys train.

Equipment Notes for Progressive Pulls

Progressive Pulls is beautifully simple: one bar, loading, and a floor or pulling surface that can handle repeated pulls. Still, the setup matters.

For the core setup, lifters and facilities can compare Olympic weightlifting bars, weight plates, dumbbells, and kettlebells for broader free-weight training. A simple Progressive Pull station might use the Iron Grip OB-7 industrial chrome Olympic weightlifting bar and IRON COMPANY urethane Olympic grip plates, when those tools match the lifter, floor, room, and intended loading.

If the garage gym grows beyond one bar on the floor, compare squat stands and modular racks, weight benches, the Legend Fitness Continuum quarter cage / squat stand and the Body-Solid SFID325B commercial FID bench. These are not required for Progressive Pulls, but they support the larger strength room built around the same barbell logic.

The equipment does not create Progressive Pulls. Exercise order, bar speed, technique, food, rest, and hard-earned restraint create Progressive Pulls.

Safety Note for Power Snatches, Power Cleans, High Pulls, and Deadlifts

Progressive Pulls is not a casual beginner pump workout. The routine combines technical Olympic-lift derivatives, high pulling volume, heavy deadlifts, fatigue, straps, post-workout feeding, and demanding recovery. Learn the power snatch, power clean, high pull, and deadlift with light weights, crisp technique, and qualified coaching when needed.

Stop or scale back for sharp pain, dizziness, numbness, wrist, elbow, shoulder, back, hip or knee pain, missed rack position, loss of bar speed, ugly upright-row-style power cleans, uncontrolled bar path, grip failure, repeated technical collapse, or any rep that becomes a different lift than the one being trained.

Do not pull aggressively on a slick concrete floor that endangers the bar, plates, floor or lifter. Use appropriate flooring, controlled loading, adequate space, and safe unloading habits. Raw milk, extreme post-workout meals and large shakes are not appropriate for everyone, especially people with food-safety risk, gastrointestinal problems, diabetes, kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, eating-disorder history, lactose intolerance, pregnancy, immune compromise, or significant medical conditions.

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW Progressive Pulls training philosophy and firsthand coaching perspective. It is not individualized medical, nutrition, rehabilitation, food-safety, or programming advice.

Related Progressive Pulls Note

IRON COMPANY also has a later companion article, Progressive Pulls Redux: Power Clean to Deadlift.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.