Blended Sets: Good Idea?

[Biren Patel]

Hello Everyone,

I am curious as to what the general opinion here is concerning blended sets, as described in the book within the programming section. They are hardly discussed. I have come up with the following blended set for pulling that encompasses basically every basic FBE motion. The exercises are listed in the order you perform them in, with + meaning you perform the positive part of the movement, and - meaning you perform the negative part of the movement. If an exercise shows "+, -", that would mean you perform the positive then the negative then move to the next exercise. At no point in the set should there be a static hold or rest, but the position of the body in front lever movements can change as needed:

Pullup +, -
Yewkis +
FL Row -, +
Reverse Yewkis -
Curl +, -
Reverse Yewkis +
Yewkis -
Front pull to FL
FL pull +, -
Pull to inverted hang
Front pull negative
= dismount

I was thinking 3 sets, rest 3-5 minutes in between.

What d'ya think? It took me quite some time to come up with a way to blend all these exercises seemlessly. I quite like the idea, it is like a basic strength set but it focuses on only pulling with 7 exercises. I figured I would probably put this into my Mppu day (Friday) of my Killroy program. But, I do not have the physical capacity to do a blended set for Pushing for Mppr.

I also figured that pullover and TOP's pull were not really necessary.

[Gavin Strelitz]

I generally use blended sets when I am ready to increase intensity by moving to the next harder progression of an exercise. For example, if the WOD calls for 3 sets of dips, 5 reps, then I might do 3 reps in one form (e.g Russian) and 2 in the next harder progression (Russian-L). Or I might do two sets in Russian and the last in Russian-L.