How Long Do You Have to Work Out With Gold Gym Pull-Up?

The Gold's Gym pull-up is a pull-up bar designed to fit into your doorway and be used at home. As with any form of exercise, getting results with the pull-up bar takes time. You need to consider not only how long it will take for you to reach your goal -- be it fat loss, muscle gain or increased strength -- but also how long you need to work out for each session.

  1. Session Length Guidelines

    • If you're performing pull-ups as part of a total-body workout, your session could last anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes. When training pull-ups as a standalone exercise, however, your workouts may be much shorter. Strength coach John Sifferman suggests trying pull-up challenges, such as pyramid pull-ups where you start at one pull-up and increase by one rep per set until you reach a peak, then come back down in the same manner. Challenges like this can be completed in as little as 10 minutes if you're proficient at pull-ups and keep the numbers low.

    The Rest of It

    • When it comes to session duration, rest times play a role, too. You'll need up to three minutes rest between sets if you're performing a low number of repetitions and training for strength, but only 60 to 90 seconds if you're training for muscle growth, notes trainer Cliff Wilson. When training for fitness, going as low as 30 seconds can be beneficial. A strength-based session incorporating the pull-up bar will last a lot longer than a fitness-based one.

    Fighting For Fat Loss

    • When training for fat burning and weight loss, pull-ups serve not only as a strength-building, calorie-burning upper-body exercise, but also as a measure of progress. The lighter you are, the less weight you have to lift and the easier it is to perform a pull-up. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend aiming for one to two pounds of weight loss each week. Decide how much weight you think you need to lose, then work out how long this should take and that will tell you how long you need to work out to achieve your goal. As a general guide a 30-minute pull-up session will burn between 180 and 266 calories for someone weighing between 125 and 185 pounds; this is the calorie burn for the average vigorous weight-training session, according to the Harvard Medical School.

    From Zero to Hero

    • Conquering your first chin-up can be tough, especially if you're new to training, but if this is your goal, it's important you have a realistic timescale in which to achieve it. If you've never performed a pull-up before, you should be able to get your first pull-up with proper form with three weeks of dedicated training, according to Equinox personal trainer Kelvin Gary. For heavier individuals, this may be slightly longer though. If you're already a pull-up aficionado, trainer John Romaneillo of Roman Fitness Systems suggests that doubling your current maximum in six weeks should be doable.