Increasing @ pull-ups.

Here is how you can minimize various types of

fatigue and get the most out of your strength training:

1) limit the repetitions to five and fewer;

2) increase the rest intervals between sets to a duration of three to five minutes;

3) limit the number of sets to two;

4) pause and relax between reps;

5) do not practice a lift more than five times a week.

That's what Pavel says in Power to the People!

I really like to increase at my pull-ups, since I already increased a lot at my paralettes dips(from like 6 to 12+). But at the moment I have to do 5x4 to get to my 20 pull-ups (watch my Workout Log) , leaving a few reps in the bank each set.. For dips I do 5x4 tog(leaving way more in the bank), and I seem to get much more strength gain. So what should I do?

Drop in the number of total pull-ups and only do 2x3 every workout? Or just do more sets with less reps, so 7x3 instead of 5x4..

I am a teenager, and I think most teenagers like to pack on some muscle, but I think I can drop that for a little while and make gaining strength my primary goal, so what should I do to get optimal results??

Greasing The Groove and Ladders

Have you tried 'Greasing The Groove' (in the naked warrior)? And there's also Ladders, I'm not sure if these are in the Naked Warrior so I'll do my best to explain them here. We'll use pull ups as the example as its easy to explain and it applies to you.

Ladders are 'Greasing the Groove' for the busy man as described by Pavel. Firstly you will of course need the equipment to perform pull ups, now let's begin. Perform your 1 pull up (now here's where the training partner comes in), have your partner perform his/her pull up if you do not have a partner just imagine how long it would take a partner to perform their set. Now perform 2 pull ups, partner goes. Follow this pattern 3, 4, 5, 6..... pull ups until 1-3 reps short of your limit. You can perform more more than one Ladder at a time or you can perform a couple of times through the day. You could also try these weighted like the aforementioned except with say 10lbs added or adding 2.5lbs each time and doing 1-2 reps.

I suggest trying DragonDoor.com to get better reading on GTG and Ladders and there will be plenty of people willing to help on the forum,

Ed

http://www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode3/220/

I kinda followed that guide.

I maxed my pullups out with 15ish. I started a 3 week program where I would perform above 50 pullups a day, each set was 10 pullups some days I would complete nearly 100 pullups. On the second week I did sets of 12. I did this everyday, on my "off days" I would only do about 50ish pullups. Next time I maxed out which was with a few days of rest was 22 dead hang pullups.

GTG worked great too, I've done both.

Are the numbers so important ?

To me GTG seems to be the best way to overtrain. Not to mention that when you do GTG you probably do not warm up.

Sometimes the fact that you do more doesn't mean you'll get more.

That's why I just don't like that GTG.

If you do GTG correctly you are not overtraining, because you are not going close to failure. I have never overtrained with GTG. It is just a way to get high volume and effortlessly improve your skill at the exercise.

Actualy, it is a common misconception you can overtrain by intensity. You cannot. You will simply not be able to lift the weight. Overtraining by volume is very common, on the other hand.

Do not forget that overtraining is basicly exceeding your work capacity. If you develop your work capacity to a level where you are able to withstand and recover from the amount of work you are going to perform, GTG or in another structure, you will enjoy supercompensation and improve. Otherwise, be careful of large increases of volume, and this is why GTG is usualy a bad idea. (Most people are not using such a large amount of sets in their normal workouts and then all of a sudden, they hammer the muscular-neuro system with GTG and this results in overtraining)

Thanks everone for their Reply's, some nice discussions which were really interesting to read. But I still don't really know what to do..

This is my workout:

Workout 1

HSPU at wall - 10xControlled Negatives, 10x 1/4 ROM.

Pull-ups x 20.

Dips x 20.

Hanging leg raises (working toward full toes-to-bar ROM) x 20

Workout 2

Handstand at wall static hold, 30 seconds

Inverted Hang 30 seconds

Planche progression

Front-lever progression

Static core: Superman, Side plank.

10 Skin the cats

20 Frog Jumps, 3x100m Hill Sprints.

I alternate between this 2 workouts with atleast one day rest in between..

I am training for the muscle-up, usually it takes me 5 sets of 4 pull-ups till I get to 20, but in the 5th set the last 2 are really hard.

My dips are OK, I can do 12+ bodyweight dips @ paralettes.

So I want to get stronger at pull-ups, since I can do like only 6 in a row, what should I do? Drop the 20 pull-ups and just make it 2x3 or 2x4?

Or should I do GTG on my rest-days?

Greets, Danny.

I can do muscle up (four in a row), and when fresh i can do slow muscleup, the other day hit 30 muscleups in a crossfit style workout (but without kipping) and I cant do more than 10 pullups (although i didnt test my PR for a long time). Perhaps if i push to my limits i could do 12, but i dont think is necesarely to achive a high number of reps to do a muscle up (as i see is your goal). For muscle up I would try to do chinups with false grip and try to do full rom, especially at top trying to arrive not to your chin but to your armpit. when you arrive to your armpit start to turn your hans to a pull up position.

In any case, the stronger you are in pullups it would be easier but doesnt means you could do the muscle up. The other day two guys at the gym come and ask me how to do a muscle up, one told me he could do 16 pullups (and you could see him musculated), but they failed repeatly. I could see that they were very far because they hardly arrived to pass the chins over the hands.

So, i dont see necessary to be very strong at pullup becouse the chin up is the easiest part of the muscle up. You just need to do one but with a great rom. :wink:

Thanks serotonin for your reply. I already do my pull-ups as high as possible, till I simply can't pull myself any higher..

But I do not only for the muscle-up like to increase my number of pull-ups, but also just because I think they are my weak point, and I like to blast out 10 of them without much effort like I can do with BW dips..

Thanks anyway, I'll pay more attention to my rom!

Danniboi,

There are many approaches that can work to increase your pullups. Here's another program: Pavel's fighter pullups (PDF 76.0 KB)

Ido Portal said:

Actualy, it is a common misconception you can overtrain by intensity. You cannot. You will simply not be able to lift the weight. Overtraining by volume is very common, on the other hand.

Do not forget that overtraining is basicly exceeding your work capacity. If you develop your work capacity to a level where you are able to withstand and recover from the amount of work you are going to perform, GTG or in another structure, you will enjoy supercompensation and improve. Otherwise, be careful of large increases of volume, and this is why GTG is usualy a bad idea. (Most people are not using such a large amount of sets in their normal workouts and then all of a sudden, they hammer the muscular-neuro system with GTG and this results in overtraining)

well said ido.

The way I trained for muscleups is just doing overhand L-sit pullups up to 5 reps. I hold the top for 2 seconds before descending and hang all the way at the bottom before going back up. The major muscle group you need to train is the "teres major" which can be trained by doing front levers, from what I understand.

I would say to just hold that top position as long as you can and train that tension at the highest point. As you develop it will become easier to hold that pose and naturally you'll be able to pull into a higher pose. I believe that is what Coach Sommer says as well.

To increase your max rep range you might want to consider doing kipping pullups for again low reps (5-10) but doing them as hard and as fast as you can. This should cause the muscle to produce extra force and train it to use more energy than needed. Again, the body should recoup to the point where it becomes really easy and obviously when you go back to doing regular pullups it should be a breeze.

Hope this helps.

Man I've tried so many of those programs for a few weeks each, best one I kind of made and read about was first find you max, then do 75% of that max till you reach above 70 pull ups, rest time between sets doesn't really matter, I went from 15-17 pull ups to 23 in less than 3 weeks, now I say that is an alright gain considering I was doing other exercises at the gym and while while I did this program.

question for kbryk. how many times per week did you train pull-ups? That program sounds intresting and i might try that one.

I did it everyday but the great thing is you do like a set every 45 minutes or so and you still come out with many pull ups, I've been through every program trying them all, I started off with pull ups when I began exercising unlike most people I just threw myself up there and tried all these different programs just to get kicks and see what they did. I don't have any information to back me up I just prefer this style.

Hey Kbryk,

So, you mean like a collective 70 pullups right? such as 7 sets of 10?

thanks in advance

Yup pretty much, lately I've been working out at a part with incline and decline poles and haven't done one pull up in about a month today I goto the gym and did 20 pull ups pretty easily; so I guess I found another method that works, they kind of are like let downs, I never do a full extension while on these bars I stay in a bent arm position.

They way I understand it is: as long as someone has trained to a certain skill point (and as long as they don't completely give up training) it is pretty easy to retain a skill even if one hasn't trained it in a long while. And especially if one has been training something that would have originally had carry-over in the first place.

I have seen this in my own training.

I like Kbryk's method! Where did you hear about it Kbryk?

For everyone who's interested, I decided to give the Fighter Pull-Up Program from Pavel a try.. In additition to my normal workouts, if it works out well I might use the principle for dips & HSPU's too.. :wink:

I'll keep you updated on my progressions, today was my first day, so in one week I will have added one rep to my pull-ups, according to the program.

Greets, Danny.

I would have to say for dips you do ladders, they made us do those in gymnastics they ate me alive, but noticed progression in a week.

1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1(For those who do not know ladders)

I would have to agree with you Ortprod, because my brother is the one who brought me into climbing, and the gymnastics work, he was a climber of course and a guy who really likes physics so when he saw the gymnastics cranking out those high leverage skills he got to it and work on some, till this day he hardly works out but when he did he climbed and work out and he still maintains at least 17 pull ups, this is with no exercising other than running now; I was just amazed that he could maintain it. Let that be some enthusiasm for you guys.

Hi Kbryk,

It seems you are confusing ladders with pyramids. When performing pyramids you work up to a certain number of reps and then taper off at the same speed (could be a increase of 1 rep at a time or 2 or 3 etc), Ladders differ in that you work up to a number of reps and then stop. Pavel has described adders as "how to grease the groove on a tight schedule." and "The ladder, on the other hand, enables the strong man to grease the groove of his chosen feat with extraordinary volume.".

Clarence Bass has a great article explaining it here http://cbass.com/Pavel'sLadders.htm. I highly suggest reading this by Clarence as well as many of his other articles, he provides insightful, unbiased views as well as sources for his views and information. And best of all no hype.

Ed

P.S those quotes of Pavel are from Cbass.com

Whoops, yea your right sorry about that, I'm not to much of the guy that reads all of that stuff Pavel have some really great stuff and other things are just out there with him.

We all can read and read and try to find the perfect workout I just like to workout it's a hobby, I see people at the gym with documents printed out on how to workout and different schedules and it makes me sad sort of because they can't work out the way they want too. I would have to say do what you enjoy and seems to work out best for you.

You can try thouse pull ups:

(WARNING: The following video is extremely stupid and crazy, although i find it amazing and if you are not responsable enough please dont watch it. If moderators find these not to be adequated please feel free to delete or advise me)

Here is a comment that made me laugh:

'Pretty weak pullups but that's probably because his giant brass balls are weighing him down.'

wat