Four years ago, I actually did this for around 3 months. My motto in our fraternity lifting group was “every day is pull-up day”, and every lifter in the fraternity knew me as the pull-up guy. I would do 5 sets to failure of full range dead-hang no-kip pull-ups every night and sometimes both morning and night. At that point I wasn’t lifting anything else. Weighed 130 pounds, could barely bench my body weight, couldn’t squat even 100 pounds and never tried deadlifting before.
So here’s what happened:
- My max pull-ups per set increased from 4 to 19 in 3 months. My recovery time between sets dropped drastically as well, and I could do 81 full range of motion reps in 5 sets with 5 minutes rest between each set.
- With a huge swing and big kip, I did my first muscle up after 3 months.
- My shoulders started developing some instability that sometimes hurts a bit if I do too many pull-ups, or drop from a muscle-up too hard. I stopped doing them every day after this became a problem. This largely became a problem because I would ignore any pain outside soreness. and do my pull-ups every day no matter what.
- My lats got pretty big, while every other part of me was still small and skinny. I had tiny legs, chest, and arms. Even the upper part of my back and shoulders, trapezius and deltoids, were small in comparison to my lats. This made me look really out of proportion.
- My shirts stopped fitting well around my back, but my arms weren’t big enough to fill out any shirt sleeves. Again, I developed really strange proportions.
- I went to the gym and picked up some dumbbells for the first time in months, and to my surprise realized my curling rep weight almost doubled.
- Witnessing the significant gains from dedication to pull-ups, I learned that the body is very responsive to any hard work you put into it. I applied similar dedication to other exercises (push-ups, deadlifting), and managed to even out my physique a bit more.
- Stopped having issues with opening bottles with screw-on caps, and wasn’t particularly hindered when the wheels on my luggage broke.
- I don’t have a before picture, but here’s a picture taken two summers after all the pull-ups and also after my bro drew a “palm tree penis” (yes I knew he was doing it, and no I didn’t care) on my back with sunscreen at the beach. I am standing naturally and weighed 145 pounds at the time:
I found another picture taken during my pull-up obsession days. It was around this time that I could do close to 30 full range-of-motion reps in one set:
In conclusion, I wouldn’t really recommend doing pull-ups every day, but if you do you’ll see results fast. If you use good form and fight for those last reps, your lats will grow quickly. In my experience, doing pull-ups when you are really sore is no problem at all. Your body will just grow even more and you will see gains faster. HOWEVER, if you experience joint pain in your shoulders and elbows, do not ignore it. Take a break, and listen to your body please. Even to this day my shoulders still feel a bit funky sometimes when I do pull-ups. Do not make the same mistake I did. Good luck!
EDIT: The image here is in no way edited. I really did have that tanned into my back and it took over half a year for it to fade. I only posted it because it is the only picture I have that shows my back musculature