We were talking about Pullups on the Torres thread, and i thought i'd post my progress on my short term goal for 20 reps, on my quest to my long term goal of 50 reps at 200 lbs non-stop.
Yesterday i broke 15 for the first time in my life, hitting 16 reps at about 201 lbs. No warmup, just went and cranked them out. rep 16 was a bit rough, and i had a light kick through my sticking point, but otherwise solid reps.
Followed it up with 15 dips, and got the fuck out of there. I was there for not more than 10 minutes hah!
Anyone else working on these, please feel free to post your results.
I only managed 11 on wednesday.
That's really impressive man. I'm working on my pullups, but it's slow progress. I can't do standard pullups (hurts my shoulder) but I've been working on doing chinups and the ones where the hands face inwards at each other.
I generally do 3 sets of 8 with each way. Gonna try to bust some out later today. I weigh 210.
Todd,
how much do you weigh?
Jkennedy,
I think the answer to your question depends on the relative intensity of my goal weight for the effort which is 200 lbs. E.G. Right now 200 is probably 66 - 76% of my 1RM, so i think a mix of strength and muscular endurance is required for the fastest progress, and i think the best way to do this is with multiple sessions in the same week (conjugate method).
If my 200 was more than 80% of my max, i'd say strength alone is adequate for the best resutls. Once 200 is roughly 50% of my max (a looooong way off) that would translate to about 30 reps at 200. The average person startes to see a dramatic increase in relative endurance beyond that (according to Zatsiorski) which would indicate a greater portion of the muscular endurance being derived from endurance factors other than strength (E.G. vasculature). At that level, purely endurance training is probably sufficient for progress, but strength is still an important factor to muscular endurance until about the 100 rep mark.
I think using the machine is fine, but so long as you can do a few good reps at bodyweight, i think efforts are better spent simply practicing the lift. I find that when i use the assist machine it changes my form enough to have a negative impact. If your bodyweight is over 90% of your 1RM in pullups, i think one long, light set per week should be sufficient to build endurance.
Awesome questions! I'd like to hear other's thoughts.
Dizz,
the 16 i did was with a neutral grip (palms facing each other).
3 X 8 isn't bad man. I suggest taking it down to 5 and do more sets.
vermonter - Dizz,
the 16 i did was with a neutral grip (palms facing each other).
3 X 8 isn't bad man. I suggest taking it down to 5 and do more sets.
Thanks man. Good advice. How many sets should I aim for? 5? And is it worth doing neutral grip and chinups, or just stick with neutral grip?
When i was 240 and worked my way up to 15 here's how i did it:
i would do as many sets of 5 i could over the course of an hour. If i got up to 10 (50 total reps) i either added weight, or did longer sets. I never exceeded 50 total reps and never exceeded 1 hour, otherwise anything was fair game. This is typically considered "too high" a rep range and i think you might get similar results with 5 sets of 5, but it worked well for me. Take your pick :)
For grip, i would primarily do whichever grip you prefer and occasionally switch to another grip for a few weeks for variety.
I believe I'm going to use Pavel's GTG method. I can bang out 15-18 reps but then no more significant work can be done on that exercise. Gonna do 8 reps throughout the day for a couple weeks. We'll see how it goes.
I weigh a buck sixty.
BS,
GTG works best at a greater intensity, IMO. I'd add weight to that if you weren't already planning that.
Doug! Brother I feel your pain.
I'm a chubby 200lb right now and those pull-ups feel so hard.
I will join you on your quest. Hopefully my elbows will enjoy the ride.
Sounds good man. First to 50 gets mad respect :)
If i ever make it, you have to come up to Vermont and film it for your website. :)
I've been working towards 5x5 with an additional 45 lbs. Right now, I'm at 5x5 at 35 lbs.
Paw,
I'd recommend the same to you. Work your way up to 7 or 8 x 5 at 35 with as much rest as you need, and you'll be able to do 45 no problem.
Just found my pullup logs from late last year when i was at my all time best and found something i had forgotten about: I pulled 290 lbs for 25 singles in under an hour on rings. Pretty proud of that.
i am at 5 reps clean, neutral grip with 100lb dumbell between the knees, unweighted i am 25 -30 range depending on grip, but i find with pullups the progress plateau comes quick and is very long and flat, i routinely will do 100 reps unweighted in under 15 minutes workouts with upwards of 200 unweighted and weighted workouts of 10 -12 sets and at some point thr returns just ain't there, this is at 185 bodyweight. My point being 50 reps may be near impossible for most
Shit, I'm struggling with 3 sets of 5, 4 and 3 respectively... Yet I've put an inch on my arms since I started doing them (started with assist machine) 
Ive worked up to sets of 3 reps with 50KG, eg 110 lbs. I can only do about 15 reps with bodyweight though. You get good in what you train. Im happy that my pulling strenght is finally better than my pressing strenght...
I did my best set of non kip pullups when I was working the one arm Db row really hard.
I would do the rows until I was exhausted and then I would go do some pullups until they turned shitty. 4 weeks of doing that I decided to do the pullups first and I hit 38 good ones.
I think before that I was stuck around 30. So it turns out the old Weider pre exhaust principle works. ;)
Yesterday managed to do 15 wide grip with 30kg of chains.