100 Rep Challenge

Bigger Stronger Leaner
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Has anyone tried this before? I read about it on Dan John’s website and decided to give it a shot sometime. Last weekend i didn’t get to train so i was really fresh and Monday i gave it a shot.

I wanted to do something full body so i decided to do tire flips with our medium tire which is about 5’6" tall 2’ side and weighs 540 lbs.

I got to the gym and luckily one of my buddies was intrigued decided to do it with me.

We planned to do five singles at a time and take 2 min breaks. It would go flip, take a few breaths, flip, 5 times then the other guy would go and you would start again in 2 min.

6:15 AM, 8-23-2010. I am 5’6-7" 185 lbs, my friend is 6’ 300 lbs.

We start

Reps 1-30 not to bad, at rep 20 we started to take longer breaks

Reps 31-40 much longer breaks

At this point the sweat on the tire made it slick and really caused me some problems. I would lose the momentum and instead of pushing it over i would lose my grip and it would fall to my thigh. At this point i would have to do some kind of tire hump/jerk/ power curl to get it to my shoulder to push it over. I would usually do this 1 time for each set of five from this point on and it usually happened on the 4th rep. When this happened it would make the rep take about 4-6 seconds and really wind me fast.

41-50 I got sick at 50 and almost gave up. Thankfully my friend made me keep going. I had to take a longer break and my friend goes ahead by 5 reps.

50-70 The combo of sand and sweat on the tire makes it like sand paper and it has eaten my hands up by rep 70. It really sucks but i can see the end now.

71-80 We are just grinding them out now, breaks are long, and i am pounding water.

80-100 My friend does 2 sets of 7 and a set of 6 like a champion to finish it out. Then he did an extra single to get 101. We cheered then he went home broken with a trashed out body. For me 80-100 was still the five singles but they were actually really easy. I knew i was almost done and i hit my second wind.

101-111 I wanted to set our gym record. I did this as one big set but it took 7+ minutes.

This whole thing is an exercise in building grit. My joints hurt, my hands are to swollen to put on my wedding band, and i couldn’t go to the gym this morning. But the next time i am trying to get that last clean or one more rep in the squat i have something to draw from. The ability to suck it up and turn my brain off and work through the nausea and pain.

Who else wants to do the 100 rep challenge?

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That’s pretty badass. I might give this a shot… .with a smaller tire haha.

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Agreed. Undoubtedly bad ass. What can one do in the gym for 100 reps that is Bad Ass that does not require a tire?

4

i did squats with 120kg half a year ago (~80% then). did a squat on the minute. the first 60 were quite ok. 60-80 were hard. 80-100 were pain. sitting down hurt for next four days, nothing has ever hit my glutes so much…
tried it with power clean+front squat+push press, but went too light.
dan john did it with snatches :wink:

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I imagine squats would be really bad.

Dead-lifts would work as would snatch and clean and jerk.

I chose tire because it so dynamic and is a total body lift with good time under tension.

The strange thing is i did it Monday and the only thing sore on me now is my forearms and hands. They are so sore i can hardly close my fist.

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[quote]jakshafter wrote:
I imagine squats would be really bad.

Dead-lifts would work as would snatch and clean and jerk.

I chose tire because it so dynamic and is a total body lift with good time under tension.

The strange thing is i did it Monday and the only thing sore on me now is my forearms and hands. They are so sore i can hardly close my fist.[/quote]

Very cool. Spectacular avatar as well.

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[quote]rephore wrote:
Agreed. Undoubtedly bad ass. What can one do in the gym for 100 reps that is Bad Ass that does not require a tire?[/quote]
Anything really.

Just to clarify, Dan John’s 100 Rep Challenge isn’t just getting 100 reps of an exercise. It’s doing 100 singles (though obviously not at 1RM).

He wrote about it here:

“The rules were simple: 100 singles with an exercise. Not 10 sets of 10, mind you, 100 singles.
…
The first time I tried it, I did squat snatches with 165 pounds.
…
Another time, I power cleaned 205 for 100. Another, I clean and jerked 185 pounds. I also front squatted 255 for 100 singles. Unrack, squat, rack, rinse and repeat.”

There’s definitely nothing “wrong” with shooting for 100 total reps any which way, but it’s not what he was talking about.

In any case, high reps and heavy weights are always a check of your scrotal contents. Good luck to y’all.

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Pushing the Limits » Dan John Here is the original article. This is a GREAT web site i recommend it to everyone.

Good point about the singles. Some stuff by its nature is singles even if it is a set. Snatches are like that deadlifts as well. That is one of the reasons I chose the tire flip. You have to squat back down, position your grip, set your back, and explode each time.

With his 100 snatches he was doing groups of five at a time, break, then a single then a break then five again.