Assisted pull-up machine

What it is

Set the counterweight, kneel or stand on the platform, take the bar overhead, and perform a pull-up. The machine pushes the platform up with the weight you selected, so you are effectively lighter by that amount.

More counterweight means more assistance. That is the opposite of every other machine in the gym, and it catches people out constantly.

What it demands

The same movement as a pull-up at a reduced bodyweight.

The important property, and the reason this record exists alongside the band version: the assistance is constant through the range. A counterweight of twenty kilos removes twenty kilos at the bottom, the middle and the top alike.

A band does not. As the band-assisted pull-up record sets out, a band assists most at the bottom where it is stretched, and least at the top — which is where the movement is hardest for most people. The machine has no such distortion, and that makes it the better assisted variation on mechanical grounds.

What usually goes wrong

Reading the number backwards. Adding weight makes it easier. Coming off the machine means using less, not more.

Bouncing off the platform at the bottom of each repetition.

Short range, as in every pull — arms straighten at the bottom, chin clears at the top.

Staying on it. The counterweight should be coming down over weeks. If it is not, nothing is changing.

Where it sits

The best-behaved of the assisted variations, and a reasonable route to a first pull-up if a machine is available.

Between the three options: this one has the cleanest assistance profile, the negative pull-up trains full bodyweight including the hard part and needs only a bar, and the band is the most available and the most mechanically compromised. All three work; they are not equivalent.