Quick question about basic strength

Hey Everyone,

I just had a quick question. I put on about as much mass as I wanted and probably even more than I wish I did since starting the progressions. Anyway, I read somewhere that if you were looking to ad numbers to an exercise like pull ups for example, it was better to train for maximum strength with weighted pull ups. The theory behind its seems sound. The idea was that it you could only bench 150lbs. as a max and tried to bench 135, your reps wouldnt be all that high. However, it you could bench 275, than you should be able to bench 135 for many reps. Has anyone ever tried this approach? I hear other methods that say its a muscle endurance that get you to doing 20-30 pull ups which I understand as well but if I had to choose a method, I think I would rather be able to do pull ups with a lot of weight strapped to me.

Also, since training for muscle ups has an explosive component (at least in the begining) Im assuming you would have to also incorperate some of that training into the plan such as clapping pull ups (at least until you were able to get your first MU)

Thanks for and advice.

Rogue

Notice how most of the GB WOD's and program are structured around 3-5reps? For weighted BW exercises, you'd have to figure out percentages but such programming calculators are out there.

RogueSpirit said:

Hey Everyone,

I just had a quick question. I put on about as much mass as I wanted and probably even more than I wish I did since starting the progressions. Anyway, I read somewhere that if you were looking to ad numbers to an exercise like pull ups for example, it was better to train for maximum strength with weighted pull ups. The theory behind its seems sound. The idea was that it you could only bench 150lbs. as a max and tried to bench 135, your reps wouldnt be all that high. However, it you could bench 275, than you should be able to bench 135 for many reps. Has anyone ever tried this approach? I hear other methods that say its a muscle endurance that get you to doing 20-30 pull ups which I understand as well but if I had to choose a method, I think I would rather be able to do pull ups with a lot of weight strapped to me.

Also, since training for muscle ups has an explosive component (at least in the begining) Im assuming you would have to also incorperate some of that training into the plan such as clapping pull ups (at least until you were able to get your first MU)

Thanks for and advice.

Rogue

Here's the thing. Endurance is primarily a function of mitochondrial density, which increases in the timeframe of just a few weeks. I'll give you some examples. I trained weighted pullups until I was doing sets of 15 with 45 lbs. This was in preparation for navy seal training. So that's how I was when I got there. In training you don't use weights. Stupid, but that's for another discussion. We trained purely for endurance. I could do 18 deadhang pullups when I got there. 5 weeks later I was doing 33. That's because i already had the strength, I just hadn't developed the endurance. Strength takes a LOT longer to build. It would have taken me close to 6 months to go from 18 to 33 or so pullups, maybe longer, if I hadn't had the strength. But I did, so I advanced really really fast. It pissed off everyone who was trying so hard but focused only on endurance. Why's he getting better at this so much faster? Because I am stronger than you. Your body doesn't have the physical strength to do what you are asking it to do, whereas mine just needs to get more efficient. So you are actually being forced to completely restructure your muscle cells, while I'm just building more mitochondria in my cells. Of course I am going to get better at it faster.

Another example is my friend Morton. He came to boot camp benching 315 for 7 reps. He could barely do 70 pushups. Mind you, they were perfect, and 70 in 2 minutes isn't bad. 8 weeks later when he left he was in the 130s. Doing perfect pushups every rep. He blew past everyone else because he already had the strength, he just never trained for the endurance.

This is the same reason that in his book Coach Sommers advocates training 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps, and getting to the hardest progressions before you start doing more reps and working on endurance. The endurance comes many, many times faster, so you work on it later. You're going to develop endurance anyways, with this training, but it's not the same. The focus is on strength, which produces a minimum of size. Sounds like you don't want to get bigger anyways, so this is perfect for you

Edit: As far as the muscle ups, I've found that doing chest and hip pullups is better for my muscleup power than the clapping stuff, but there's nothing wrong with it. It certainly turns heads

Yup, high strength increases the POTENTIAL for max endurance (up to a certain point... but most of us probably won't reach that point).

So training strength helps your endurance significantly (when you start training for the endurance later on if you need to).

Thanks for the quick reply. That answered my question perfectly. If I can expand on things though...how would you structure your training around execises like HSPU's, dips and planche pressing? They all strongly use the shoulders and triceps and I really dont want to risk blowing out a joint. I thought maybe rotating like coach recommends doing the embedded work on all working days but rotate the kind of pressing/pulling...ex. Mon - HSPU, Tues - Dips, Thurs - Planche, Fri - repeat. Will this be enough work to keep progressing in those exercises though?

Sorry for so many questions.

Rogue

Doing a singular static hold won't hurt, but you should have focus days. For example, one day I will do my ring strength, pseudoplanche pushups, and two or three sets of wall handstands. The ring strength is mostly back work for me, I work on my muscleups and dips but not super hard. Maybe 3 sets of each. I do 2 sets of 3 reps each of tick tocks, full lay on the way down, hold, straddle or flat tuck on the way back up. Straight into wide pullups, usually 5-7 reps. I can't do muscleups on the rings yet, so that's my two sets. THEN I do two sets of wide support, bulgarian dips rings turned out, held wide the whole time, from the bottom to the top of the motion. 5 reps of that, straight into flat tuck planche with 3-5 pushups in that position. Then I rest, lower the rings to the floor, and do two sets of PSS pushups, and two sets of pseudomaltese pushups, each of those pseudomalteses ending in full extention chest flyes on the rings after the 3-5 pushups. That's not too much chest work for me, so I don't consider it a heavy chest day, more medium. The back work is heavy though, much harder. Then I take like 3 days off. Those off days still have stretching and some statics, but usually that's when I focus on my abs and my L-sit, manna(or my sorry version of it), and straddle L. Then my next day is parallel bar work, with front lever pulls, front lever rows, yewkis into reverse yewkis, russian dips, swinging dips, and maybe some planche dips. I am going to start doing weighted dips on that day as well. I'll probably knock a set off of one of those other dips and replace it with one set of heavy weighted dips. After that I have a rest day, with stretching and light ab work and easy statics. The next day I will do one heavy set of weights in the gym for dead lift, squat, flat bench, maybe incline bench, straight bar curl, and I will do body levers with ankle weights. That's really it for that day. Then in two days or so it's rings again. I also do jumping squats, single leg hops for distance, and arch snaps on one of those rest days after the rings. So basically I have one heavy weight day with very very low volume, one ring day, one parallel bar day. Statics are interspersed. I do some on the p-bars, some on the floor, I end up doing a set or two of them a few times a week. That's pretty much that, man.

Rogue, I was rotating HeSPU, dipping, and horizontal pushing ( pseudo planche pushups on rings ) every workout to compliment the planche work. Sometimes the planche work was merely working on 60s of volume or sometimes it was doing the embedded system or static hold + the isokinetic complimentary/accessory exercise for 3-5r for 3 or 4 rounds.

As far as blowing out a joint, if you listen to your body that is simply not going to happen or even be a danger until you get to some high level competition. Even then, by that point you're going to be a) really strong and b) very in tune with your body. I wouldn't worry about that. All you need to worry about is over-training.

slizzardman said:

As far as blowing out a joint, if you listen to your body that is simply not going to happen or even be a danger until you get to some high level competition. Even then, by that point you're going to be a) really strong and b) very in tune with your body. I wouldn't worry about that. All you need to worry about is over-training.

Agreed.

Listen to your body and if any joints/tendons start to get sore you need to back off a little.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. I think intuitively I have been doing all that has been recommended...but slightly lazier

I'm probably just too impatient and want quicker results but I think thats typical. We all would love to bust out a planche after a few sessions of training.

Thanks again,

Rogue