The short answer is Yes, lifting your knees makes it easier.
Your body knows this: it prefers the rowing-angle to the pulling-straight-up-overhead angle. The lats connect to the upper arm across the scapulae, so they have an angle coming from behind or across the back --- so they're stronger if they're rowing an object toward your chest with your back almost perpendicular to the line of pull. When you curl your knees up, you enable your lats to pull at this stronger angle.
The next step for you is a fast 1-2 step: (1)curl those knees up explosively, then (2)even more explosively open your hips to throw your upper body towards the bar. This is the essential heart of the kip.
The other parts of it are two, 1) start from a swing, and 2) push away from the bar at the top - like a push-up or bench press - to cycle your body backwards and feed yourself back into the swing.
These steps to the kip, the swing, the knees-up, and the opening-the-hips, are why I designed the assistance exercises and billed them as drills to develop the pull-up. They are precisely that. The assistance exercises included swings, knees-to-elbows, L-sits. They get you comfortable with the kipping components while building your grip and hang strength, all of which will feed right into kipping pull-ups.
If you've got a problem with kipping pull-ups, let me know so we can discuss it. This is one of the most trenchant dogmas in the fitness world, and sadly, one of the most counterproductive and wrong-headed.
no subject
Your body knows this: it prefers the rowing-angle to the pulling-straight-up-overhead angle. The lats connect to the upper arm across the scapulae, so they have an angle coming from behind or across the back --- so they're stronger if they're rowing an object toward your chest with your back almost perpendicular to the line of pull. When you curl your knees up, you enable your lats to pull at this stronger angle.
The next step for you is a fast 1-2 step: (1)curl those knees up explosively, then (2)even more explosively open your hips to throw your upper body towards the bar. This is the essential heart of the kip.
The other parts of it are two, 1) start from a swing, and 2) push away from the bar at the top - like a push-up or bench press - to cycle your body backwards and feed yourself back into the swing.
These steps to the kip, the swing, the knees-up, and the opening-the-hips, are why I designed the assistance exercises and billed them as drills to develop the pull-up. They are precisely that. The assistance exercises included swings, knees-to-elbows, L-sits. They get you comfortable with the kipping components while building your grip and hang strength, all of which will feed right into kipping pull-ups.
If you've got a problem with kipping pull-ups, let me know so we can discuss it. This is one of the most trenchant dogmas in the fitness world, and sadly, one of the most counterproductive and wrong-headed.