PULL UP KING

Negative Pull-Ups: How to Do Them, How Long to Lower, How Many to Do, and Pairing Them With Bands (2026)

2026.10.14

Negative pull-ups train just the lowering half of a pull-up. You get your chin over the bar first, with a chair or a jump, and from there you resist slowly all the way down until your arms are straight. This post works from the methods and numbers in a U.S. Marine Corps pull-up training guide to cover how to get to the top, how long to take on the way down, how many to do, how to combine them with bands, and how PULL UP KING counts the movement.

The order of steps from dead hangs to your first rep, and where negatives fit in it, is in the post for when you can't do a pull-up. This one covers negatives and nothing else.

Why negative pull-ups are easier than pulling up: you're stronger lowering

The Pull-up Training Guide that used to be posted on the U.S. Marine Corps' official website (updated February 2016, prepared by Major M.J. Posey) describes the negative as the lowering portion of the pull-up, the second half, also known as the eccentric portion. An eccentric action is a muscle producing force while it lengthens; producing force while it shortens is concentric. The guide calls the negative one of the best pull-up progressions, and gives this as the reason it's easier than pulling up: people tend to be about one and a half times stronger during the eccentric portion of an exercise. Negatives also appear in the guide's training table for people who can't yet do a single bodyweight pull-up.

Research has numbers on this too. A meta-analysis that pooled data from 12,546 people across 335 studies (Nuzzo et al., 2023) concluded that eccentric strength is about 40% greater than concentric strength (a ratio of 1.41), and upper-body movements on their own came out at 1.42. But about 98% of the measurements were taken on isokinetic machines, and the ratio was affected most by movement velocity. Hollander et al. (2007) tested 10 young men and 10 young women with resistance training experience on weight machines, and the men's eccentric one-rep max on the lat pulldown was 32% greater than their concentric one. Neither study measured pull-ups.

How to do negative pull-ups: chair, jump, and bar height

The guide says to use a chair, a step, or a partner to get your chin above the bar, and that this is where a negative starts. It also says negatives are easier with a chin-up grip, palms facing you. How the grips differ is covered in the chin-up vs. pull-up post. Once your feet come off the chair, the chair stops carrying any of your weight, so unless something else is helping, your two hands hold all of it. In its section on jumping pull-ups, the guide says to have a sturdy platform to jump off.

Jumping negatives replace the chair with a jump from the floor. Here is the guide's sequence. Under the bar, bend down, jump, and grab the bar. Without pausing, go straight into a pull-up, using that momentum to get your chin over the bar. Hold the top briefly, then lower yourself over 3 to 6 seconds. The guide says this is more challenging than either a regular negative or a jumping pull-up on its own. PULL UP KING also suggests jumping negatives when you don't have a band. The app's FAQ phrases it as "jump up to the bar and lower yourself over about three seconds," lists it next to putting one foot on a low chair and pushing with your leg, and says "Both count as reps."

To jump, the bar has to be at the right height. The guide says bar height is critical to learning the first pull-up, because progressions like negatives are hard to do when the bar is too tall. It gives 5'10" (about 178 cm) as the height that fits the average female Marine, who is 5'3" (about 160 cm), and explains that at this height she can stand on the ground and jump to get her chin above the bar. Door-mounted bars, it says, are usually low enough, and for a bar that's too tall it suggests putting a plyo box underneath to make the bar "lower." Bar types are covered in the home pull-up bar post.

How slow to lower: seconds per negative

The guide's numbers are 3 to 7 seconds per negative when you start from a chair or step, and 3 to 6 seconds for a jumping negative. Hold the top briefly, lower yourself slowly, and once you reach a dead hang with your arms fully extended, get off the bar, recover, and go again. The guide notes that controlling your descent may be hard at first, but with practice you'll be able to lower yourself more slowly.

If one part of the descent is especially hard to control, the guide has the pausing negative. Partway down, for example with your elbows at a 90-degree angle, hold for 3 to 7 seconds, then lower all the way to the bottom. The guide says pausing where you have the most trouble resisting gravity is especially helpful, and that you can pause at more than one point.

PULL UP KING's cue is three seconds, but the camera doesn't time your descent and throw out reps. The app counts one round trip as a rep: your chin rises above the judging line (a dashed line just below the bar, around elbow height) and then comes back down a set distance below it. While a set is in progress, if no rep is underway and your chin is already above the judging line, a rep starts right there, so a negative that starts at the top also counts as one once you come down. A set only starts when the app sees you holding the bar with your arms up (wrists and elbows above your shoulders). With your chin over the bar, your elbows are below your shoulders, so that position doesn't qualify. Start the set from a hang first, then get to the top with a chair or a jump. There's no time condition, so dropping straight down and taking 7 seconds count the same: one rep. The app doesn't judge momentum or whether your arms get fully straight either, so those are on you, along with your lowering time.

The app does look at the lowering phase of your regular pull-up sets, separately. In a set's video window, switch on Analysis and it times each rep from top to bottom. If the median is under 0.55 seconds, the coach says: "You drop on the way down. Lowering is part of the rep — stay in control and come down slowly." In the 13 reference videos used to set that threshold, the two fast-tempo sets that dropped rep after rep came in at 0.37 to 0.40 seconds, and the rest were 0.64 seconds or more. The 0.55-second line is there to tell whether you dropped, which is a different matter from a 3-to-7-second negative.

How many negative pull-ups should you do? The Marine Corps guide's numbers

The guide splits its table by your max reps. Here is the row for fewer than one bodyweight pull-up.

Those 25 to 50 reps are a total across several progression exercises, not negatives alone, and they're split into several sessions within the day. The same guide says to rest at least two days a week, and if your shoulders or elbows are overly tender or sore, to rest, cut back on volume, or seek medical treatment. PULL UP KING goes the other way: it locks pull-up sessions to one a day and recommends three a week, every other day. How the two approaches differ is laid out in the pull-ups every day post.

On your first day, think ahead to the next one. A review of eccentric exercise (Proske and Morgan, 2001) describes it as a distinctive feature of eccentric exercise that people who aren't used to it become stiff and sore the day afterward because of damage to muscle fibers, and notes that a second bout a week later produced much less damage. It isn't a review about pull-ups specifically, but a negative is an eccentric exercise: lowering and nothing else. If it hurts while you're doing it, stop for the day.

Using negatives with bands: where the guide and the app part ways

For the first pull-up, the guide says to ditch the bands and assist machines and do partner-assisted pull-ups, negatives, jumping pull-ups, dead hangs, and the like instead. It says some people get "stuck" on bands because they don't know how to progress off them, and that if you can do a bodyweight negative, you don't need bands or assist machines. Even for people who can't do a bodyweight negative, it says ring rows, dead hangs, and similar exercises should be used alongside bands or instead of them.

PULL UP KING uses bands. Levels 1 to 12 are the band stage, and every three levels the assistance steps down: Strong band, Medium band, Light band, then Mixed. Progress in this stage means less assistance, not more reps. On a day without a band, you use jumping negatives or a chair assist, and the camera counts the movement, not whether you're using a band.

The two movements put the help in different places. A band pull-up covers the full range, with the band holding up part of your bodyweight. That help is greatest at the bottom, with your arms straight, and shrinks as your chin nears the bar. In a negative, your hands take your full bodyweight the whole way down, and the chair or the jump stands in for the pulling-up part.

Where they look alike is in mixing bodyweight reps and assistance in one session. The guide's row for 1 to 5 pull-ups fills each set with 1 bodyweight pull-up, or 3 progression reps, or 1 pull-up plus 2 progression reps, and says to do as many sets of one strict pull-up as you can without burning out, then switch to progressions. The app's Mixed phase (levels 10 to 12) has you do the early sets without a band and add a light band from the first set where the reps stop coming. It's the stage where you cut down the number of sets that use a band. Choosing a band and looping it on the bar are covered in the pull-up bands post.

Counting negatives in PULL UP KING

Set up your phone so the bar and your upper body are both in view, and check that the starting position, with your chin above the bar, also fits in the frame. A set starts when you hold the bar with your arms up and wait a moment. For the first set, you have to hold that position steady until a 3-second countdown finishes.

Because you get off the bar after every negative, this is where a set can break. When you let go and drop your hands, the app waits 2.5 seconds and won't start a new rep during that time. The wait isn't cleared by time passing. It's cleared only when the app sees your arms back up. So to stay in the same set, the app has to see you holding the bar with your arms up within 2.5 seconds of letting go. If you step off the chair straight into the chin-over-the-bar position, that doesn't qualify, and the wait isn't cleared.

Once 2.5 seconds pass, if you've done at least one rep in that set, the app can move to rest. Grabbing the bar and raising your arms doesn't end the rest, and negatives done during rest aren't counted. If a negative set moves to rest this way, you can bring the set back with "Return to set N" on screen during the first 10 seconds of rest. After that, hold the bar with your arms up for a moment and the count picks up where it left off. After 10 seconds, "Start next set" takes its place, and rest ends only when the rest timer runs out or you tap that button. Whether the arms-up position registers the moment you grab the bar from a chair or a jump hasn't been checked on a real device, so watch whether the count on screen goes up as you go.

FAQ

Will negative pull-ups alone get me my first pull-up?

The sources checked for this post can't answer that. The guide calls negatives one of the best progressions, but no study turned up that had people who can't do a single pull-up train with negatives alone to see whether a first rep follows. The one pull-up eccentric training study found on PubMed involved 30 advanced male climbers (Vigouroux and Devise, 2024), and its negative group lowered themselves over 5 seconds with a load of 95% of their one-rep max. After 5 weeks, maximum strength had gone up 2.2% to 5.0% in all three training groups. Those conditions don't carry over to someone starting from zero. Since negatives don't train the pulling-up part, one option is to mix them with jumping pull-ups or assisted pull-ups, the way the guide does.

How long should a negative pull-up take?

The guide gives 3 to 7 seconds per rep when you start from a chair or step, and 3 to 6 seconds for a jumping negative. PULL UP KING's cue is three seconds after the jump. If there's a point that's hard to hold, you can also pause there for 3 to 7 seconds before lowering the rest of the way.

Does the app count negative pull-ups as reps?

Yes, while a set is in progress. Start with your chin above the judging line and come down a set distance below it, and that's one rep. A set starts when you hold the bar with your arms up (wrists and elbows above your shoulders) and wait a moment. It won't start with your chin over the bar. What keeps the set going when you get off the bar between reps is covered above in "Counting negatives in PULL UP KING." The app doesn't judge how long you took to come down, momentum, or whether your arms got fully straight, so those are up to you. What counts as one full rep is covered in the pull-up form post.

No band today? Jumping negatives still count

If you don't have a band during the level 1–12 band stage, the app tells you to jump up to the bar and lower yourself over about three seconds, and its FAQ says this counts as reps too. A set starts when you hold the bar with your arms up for a moment, and if you let go between reps, the app has to see your arms back up within 2.5 seconds to keep you in the same set.

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