This 45 Year Old Thought Pull-Ups Were Behind Him. Then He Changed One Thing.

He did not stop because he got weak. The reason was where the bar kept putting his elbows, and he never said it out loud.

Dan Whitfield

Science Meets Gym • Aug 20, 2026 • 6 min read

He Bought Them As A Last Ditch Effort

Pete M. describes himself, in a review he left on Kensui's site in February 2023, as a “45yr old washed up meathead who loves doing pull-ups.” That is his phrasing, not ours, and it is doing a lot of work.

What he wrote next is the part that shows up again and again in these reviews. “After many years of training, the wear and tear on my joints (elbows) was becoming and issue and stopping me from doing pull-ups.” No injury, no event, no moment he could point at. Just a slow accumulation that made one exercise a bad idea.

So he bought a pair of plastic handles. His words again: “I purchased both versions of the Swissies in a last ditch effort. It WORKED!! Im back to regularly doing pull-ups pain free and can not thank Kensui enough. I was skeptical at first but now I’m an absolute believer!”

We are not going to tell you that a $39 accessory did something to Pete's elbows. We cannot know that and neither can he. What we can tell you is what the handles physically change, why hundreds of people describe the same experience in almost the same words, and where they are the wrong answer.

Three Ways To Change The Angle

Turning your palms inward on a pull-up is not a new idea. Gyms have sold the fix for decades in two shapes, and both of them work. The question is what each one costs you in money, in setup and in floor space.

Competitor prices checked against REP Fitness on August 20, 2026: the 1.25″ Wood Gymnastic Rings with 7.5′ straps at $39.99, and the Multi-Grip Pull-Up Bar (4000 series) at $139.99. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Rings genuinely win the range argument. They rotate freely through the whole rep, they hang anywhere, and they do dips and rows and a dozen things a handle cannot. If you have somewhere to hang them and you do not mind the setup, buy rings.

The multi-grip bar wins the other end. It is fixed, it is solid, there is nothing to attach and nothing to lose. If you own the rack it fits and you never train anywhere else, that is the better purchase.

What Swissies win is narrower and, for a lot of people, more useful. They change the angle on the bar that is already in the doorway, the garage or the gym you drive to.

What Actually Changes When Your Palms Face Each Other

Hang from a straight bar with your palms facing away and your forearms are held in one fixed position for the whole set. Your hands cannot move, the bar will not rotate, and your shoulders have to find the range from somewhere. Every rep runs through the same narrow path.

Turn your palms to face each other and three things move at once. Your forearms settle into a middle position instead of being turned out. The elbows travel closer to your ribs rather than flaring wide. Your shoulders sit in a slightly different place at the bottom of the hang.

None of that is a treatment and we are not going to dress it up as one. It is a change of geometry. Whether a different path suits you better than the old one is something only your own sets can answer, which is what the 100 day window is for.

The practical details are dull and they matter. A pair weighs under a pound in the box. There is a carabiner eyelet on top, so the same handles clip onto a cable stack or a band. And because nothing is bolted down, you slide them along the bar to whatever width you want.

That last one is the quiet advantage over both alternatives in the table. A multi-grip bar decided your grip width at the factory. Rings decide it by where you could get the straps up. Handles that hook on decide nothing until you put them there.

The Part Nobody Says Out Loud

Most people in this position never describe themselves as injured. They describe themselves as busy, or as having moved on to other things, and the exercise disappears from the program without a conversation.

Earl D. put the honest version in a review in August 2022. “I’ve suffered with elbow pain on and off for years and discovered pressing or pulling exercises with a neutral grip helps alleviate that. I had resigned myself to dumbbell rows.”

Resigned. That is the word that gives it away, and it is the reason this page exists rather than a page about grip strength. Dumbbell rows are a fine exercise. Nobody switches to them from pull-ups because they wanted to.

The Reviews Kensui Did Not Ask For

We read every publicly visible review across the Swissies range, roughly 1,600 of them. The comeback story is not a marketing angle somebody invented. It is the single most repeated thing customers write, unprompted, in their own spelling.

Steve B. is the one who wrote the line the rest of them are circling. After a set he describes in some detail, he finished his review with this.

What People Complain About

The rating is 4.88 across 180 reviews on the V2, so the complaints are a minority. They are also specific and worth knowing before you spend anything.

The price, for what it is. One three-star review says the whole thing in six words: “Massively overpriced for plastic hooks…” Another four-star buyer liked them and still wrote “Just wish they were a bit cheaper.” They are moulded plastic, they cost $39, and if that maths offends you it will keep offending you after they arrive.

The carabiner eyelet is small. Three separate reviewers raise it. “The holes to connect to a carabiner are too small,” says one. “Just wish the holes for cable attachments were a little bigger,” says another. If you are buying these mainly to clip onto bands or a cable stack rather than to hang on a bar, check your clip diameter first.

They hang below the bar. That is the design, and it means your hands start a few inches lower than they used to. In a garage with a low doorway bar, that is the difference between a full hang and tucked knees.

Who This Is Actually For

If your pull-ups feel fine, you do not need these and nothing on this page applies to you. Go and do your pull-ups.

If you have quietly dropped them, or cut the sets, or swapped in a machine and told yourself it was a programming choice, then the useful thing about $39 is how little it costs to find out. Kensui gives you 100 days to send them back.

How we sourced this page. Every quote above is a publicly visible, verified-buyer review on a Kensui Swissies product page, checked on August 20, 2026. Kensui sells the handles in two generations and each has its own review pool, so each credit line names which one that reviewer bought. Price, rating, review count, load rating and bar fit range were read off the live Swissies V2 page the same day. Reviewers describe their own conditions in their own words. Science Meets Gym makes no claim that any product treats, prevents or improves any medical condition.