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Summer '07 Upper-Lower Split
UPPER 2 - WEEK 7


Workout:-

Military Press = 4 sets x 5 reps x 120 lbs (55 kgs)

Pull-ups = 7 + 5 + 4 + 3 = 19

Close Grip Bench Press = 3 sets x 6 reps x 155 lbs (70 kgs)

Overhead Shrugs = 3 sets x 10 reps x 65 lbs (30 kgs)

Russian Twists = 2 sets x 10 reps x 10 lbs (5 kgs)

Hanging Leg Raises = 2 sets x 15 reps x BW

TOTAL POUNDAGE:-

W7 --->>> 10,655 lbs
W6 --->>> 11,220 lbs
W5 ---->>> 12,210 lbs
W4 --->>> 13,270 lbs
W3 --->>> n/a
W2 --->>> n/a
W1 --->>> 8,847 lbs

Overall Impression:-

good workout.

Military Press: new PR again!!! im happy. damnit this was tough.

Pull-ups: new PR once again haha. 19 reps are mine all over again.

Close Grip Bench Press: felt great on my triceps.

Overhead Shrugs: lol...i misunderstood Eric's "Shrugs" idea as being regular shrugs. what he meant was OVERHEAD shrugs for my shoulder prehab. and boy...was this one tough exercise. but it felt ok.

Russian Twists: felt ok

Hanging Leg Raises: boring

Diet: diet's back on track whoo hoo

Overall: been one long boring day. fuck, in 7 more weeks im gonna be back in america :( i dont wanna leave my family......

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Weird how you suddenly started progressing again on pullups, huh?

yah man.....must be that guy who helps me out with my programs......

seriosuly though: im just waiting for the day that i can do 10 reps straight. im so so so close.

hey, i wanted a pull-up tip. usually when i do pull-ups, i just take one huge breath of air and hold it in my stomach (i have found that this usually stabalizes me and keeps me from rocking) and i knock all my reps till i fail. however, if i stop at the bottom after every rep and breathe, i can barely finish 5 reps!!! :( is there anything i can do to overcome this small problem? usually, i end up finishing my pull-ups when all the oxygen ive inhaled and stored in my stomach has been converted to carbon dioxide!

I've never paid attention to my breathing when doing pullups. I figure my body knows how to breathe when I'm doing them. I try not to hold my breath doing anything because that has caused me problems in the past. But I don't concentrate and "strive unnaturually" to control those things that are largely automatic. To me that only diverts you mind to things it shouldn't need to be concerned with when in fact it should be centered and not "thinking" about anything. In other words I think you may be psyching yourself out.

I have noticed you saying you are doing "dead hang" pullups. I don't know what that means exactly but it sounds like just another distraction to me. Basically I don't stop at the bottom to breathe but I also don't purposely hold my breath. I just do it.

If I start rocking I control it through body control. But I don't artificially try to control it before it happens. I mean we're not talking about squats here.

Another question is since you say PULLUPS I take it your have palms facing away. If, on the last set, once you don't think you can do another, you switch to a chinup grip (palms facing you) your can probably pull out 2 or 3 more. Those few extra reps can make a big difference.

The thing about pullups is you really have to put in that extra effort at the end. There is a lot of biceps in there as well. You know, with rows, it's all about scapular retraction, so if you can develop that, then the bi's will have very little to do with it. But you can't really do a pullup by JUST retracting the scapula or the lats. It's kind of like bench, different muscles do more of less work through different phases of it. As a matter of fact I've found that extra bicep work, if overdone, will shut down my pullups. Whereas just doing pullups/chinups will send my bicep curl strength through the roof.

I don't know if any of this helps. Pullups for me, has always been something I could just do well. So my insights may not be as valuable as someone who has struggled with them and brought them up regardless.

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If you act sanctimonious I will just list out your logical fallacies until you get pissed off and spew blasphemous remarks.

alright Eric. ill do the chin-ups thing u suggested. yes, pull-ups means palms facing away and medium to wide grip. when i say deadhang i mean i dont do half ROM but i stop just short of lockout. usually its very very controlled till the last one of two reps...then i tend to lock my elbows :( after all...for me to move 85 kgs of my body is tough!!! hehe

You mean people do partial pullups? Why the hell would anyone do that?

You can also move your grip in closer at the end and that will help get in more also.

A good challenge, however, is to do 1 and 1/4 reps on pullups.

dude....dont make fun of those people...i used to be one of them.....:( i used to do that because i was very weak off the bottom. hehe...this is funny because i dont need to that anymore im so waiting to get strong enough so i can do 5x5 like u suggested.

oh.....well, next stop then

I'd never make fun. It's just not a very effective thing to do is all. I'm not going to do anyone a service by giving them a pat of the back and a pass for making ineffective training decisions. I don't expect anyone to do that for me either .

They would be better off doing negatives.

The thing is for someone who has not done a lot of pullups it's really time to say "i'm weak at this portion or that portion". That's like doing bench for the first time, picking too heavy a weight, getting stuck at the bottom and saying "i'm weak off the chest". No, the weight was just too heavy. Same thing with pullups. Your bodyweight is just too heavy. I'm not saying that people can't be weak at certain portions of a pullup although it's not something I've ever thought about or heard discussed.

But I'm trying to make sense of this. Are you saying sense you were weak at the bottom you worked only the top? Or you just worked the bottom.

This all comes down to, as I've said many times, a preoccupation with certain amounts of reps, sets, and stuff like that. If you want to get stronger at a movement, then the first thing you need to let go of is the idea of this for size and that for strength. The best way to get better at pullups is to do pullups. Even if you can only do 1 rep for three sets. Because next time if you do, for instance, 2-1-1, that's and improvement. Developing strength is largely about training movements.

But most people have been sold this bill of goods about 3 sets of 8 or some other combination. And so they short change themselves at the beginning. I'm not saying that all sorts of things don't contribute to success at one particular movement. Because they do. But you start always with the movement.

Even a person who can't do one pullup can probably do a negative rep. And that will contribute to strength development a lot faster than a partial rep. And by the same token if you can't do a pullup it means you are weak, not necessarily broken. so getting on a machine designed for injured people is a little silly for a healthy able-bodied, but untrained individual. If you are simply too heavy to do one...well, we all know the cure for that.

By no means am I saying there aren't other ways to skin a cat, though. I'm a pullup freak and I can well attest that one great way to get better at pullups is to do them more often. But for that you need to stay well away from failure. You gradually increase the volume even if you are repeating basically the same sets. But this is a NEURAL device. I think it's called synaptic facilatation. It doesn't mean the answer is to do endless sets of lightweight pulldowns since then you are not training the same synaptic pathways. But it's a trick that's hard to pull off without interfering with the rest of you workouts and it would have to be done very slowly. The mistake people make is assuming that jsut because you stay away from failure there is not neural or other metabolic cost. And of course there always is to some extent.

If you were to replace one of those row exercises with pullups on lower one...but stopping short of failure even if that means your basically doing the same thing twice, you'd probably see some quicker progress on pullups. You could still go to failure (but not beyond) on upper two like you have been doing cuz that is at the end of your traning week and it's really the only thing you are working to failure on.

i know i know...i was kidding dude (i know u know that but im just stating that for the record)

well....yes, but only for a certain period of time.

hmm...well, sir, u know my history. i was a fat guy all through 10th grade. for me, to do 1 pull-up without cheating was impossible. i could easily pull myself up from midway but trying to unlock my elbows (or even if i didnt lock them - in the case, pulling myself from the bottom to midway) was impossible. if i ever managed to do that, i would be destroyed by the time i reached midway that i wouldnt be able to complete the rep. so it was either bottom to midway or midway to the top. u know what i mean? i used to be embarassed to do pull-ups at one point of time.

u know, when i did pull-ups (upon ur recommendation) i used to do just 1 rep at a time and that 1 rep was a jump rep u know. and then slowly i went from that to 2 reps. then 3. i think for quite a while i stuck at 5 reps as my max. then i stopped jumping and did them from the bottom without any assistance. got 5 after a while. and now im at 7. 10 is coming right up big E

when u say i should remove the tows and do pull-ups instead, are u saying i should do barbell rows (like we discussed) but instead of the dumbbell rows 2x8-12 i should knock out 2 sets of pull-ups NOT TO FAILURE???

^^^^Yeah, basically something like that. It's about body learning....practice. You get better at something you do more often. It's as simple as that. Any time I do pullups in particular more than just once a week (which is most of the time) I make better progress on them, assuming I don't overdo them.

You have to think about it logically. It really doesn't need any fancy science if you do. You want to get better at pullups. They give you trouble. But all this time what have you prioritized? The thing you are better at (in general, I mean, notwithstanding learning JS rows)..rows. Now playing to your strengths is good but certain movements in themselves play to your strengths and improve them. Pullups is one of those.

But I'm not talking some extreme thing. You know like Pavel with his "greasing the groove" scenario where he talks about doing something 3 times a day. That may be fine and well for someone obsessed with bodyweight exercises but it gets a little muddy for someone engaged in some serious strenght training.

But it's very similar to the reason I have you doing box squats on lower 2 with more volume. All that low intensity repping helps your body learn the movement. So when you switch it to heavy work you'll be much more successful in a shorter period of time. But with the squats you have the ability to change the resistance and do a lot of volume. With pullups you can't change the resistance (unless you use the assisted pullups thingy..which is not the same exercise) so you up the frequency. In a perfect world, if you could pull it off, doing something more often with less volume would work better, to tell the truth. But either way works very well.

The thing with negatives is about people who can't do one rep. You do negatives until you can pull off a rep unassisted. Then you could do a rep and some more negs until you get better, so on and so forth.

A basic progression recommendation: Right now I don't know what kind of rest periods you are using. With the reps you are getting right now I would take nice long rests, at least 3 minutes, until you can pull off around 8 for 3 sets. Then start shortening the rest periods. Before you know it 10 reps won't be a problem.