So there’s a competition where I train and it’s who can do 40 pullups in the shortest amount of time. You can use any combination of sets & reps, as long as it’s 40 overhand pullups, chin over bar at top, arms near lockout at bottom. No kipping.
What i’d like to hear from you guys is your thoughts on the most efficient reps/recovery to get it done in about 90 seconds, and what training methods would help me with this?
I’ve never done weighted pullups but was going to try doing 4 sets of 10 on that with 1 minute rest between each, then shorten the recovery each time. As for real attempts I tried 5 x 8 with 15-20 secs rest and after 4 sets I ended up doing 3,3,1,1 (finished in 129 secs). I think something like 4 sets of 10 with 15 seconds rest is do-able. It’s a video upload comp. and it’ll run through October.
You’re welcome to try it and post a time here too, be nice to see what can be achieved.
why time yourself in a deadhang? at the bottom, you want to stop any kind of movement which takes a second or two,then do the next rep. you tend to move a little bit even though you’re not kipping, so some may take 3-4 seconds at the bottom to make sure they arnt moving at all to make it a legit dead hang pulllup.
time yourself in a kipping contest. deadhangs should be slow and accurate. the faster you try to do them, the more they become a “non deadhang”
maybe i misunderstood what kipping is. I saw a vid of some guy wriggling about like a fish while doing his reps and that’s not really a fair way. I mean 40 pullups with a static lower body.
Ya the black guy in the second vid had it right if dead hang to near lock is what you’re going for here.
I can do 30 or so dead hang… but I do em like the guy in the 2nd vid… where my head goes far over the bar and I keep it straight… he has good form… like mine:)
but if you’re going for REPS in X TIME you want to DROP from the top and pull fast… this means NO eccentric movement that would tire you at all. you will have to get used to doing this while maintaining no kip. takes some practice.
As far as handling fatigue… it all depends how good you are at pull ups. Personally… I’d do 12, 8, 8, 8, 4 but with like hardly any break between the sets. Or at least try that and adjust from there. Play with the sets to see how you do. You obviously want to avoid hitting a wall and maintain a super fast speed.
Let’s look at the numbers:
Goal 40 pullups in 90sec
Depending on how tall you are and your technique you should be able to get 1 pullup done in 1 - 1.7sec depending on how fatigued you get and assuming you are between 5’7 and 6’2 this is how the numbers could look.
12 in 13sec (using 1.1)
Rest 10sec
8 in 10sec (using 1.2)
rest 10sec
8 in 10sec (using 1.3)
rest 15sec
8 in 11sec (using 1.4)
rest 10sec
4 in 6sec (using 1.5)
Done Total Time 96seconds
It will be crucial to keep up you performance near the end when you are tired. So endurance training for pullups and a mix of overweight training can help.
I like cluster training for pullups. Mix up bodyweight and weighted vest training. You might want to consider doing this:
12 reps bodyweight
8 reps bodyweight
8 reps bodyweight
8 reps vest
4 reps vest
I like the sound of the reps, might struggle on the 4th set but could see myself being quite fresh at the halfway stage. I’m only 5’9 so I have short levers on my side.
The benchmark performance was about 95 secs and that broke down as
15 in 17s (rest 20s)
10 in 11s (rest 8s)
5 in 7s (rest 7s)
5 in 7s (rest 9s)
5 in 9s
Pretty sore from a pullup session on thursday (2 x 10 reps with 5kg, 6 x 10 reps BW), but will have a go over the weekend at the rate I need for a 90-something time and will post a video.
Drop after each rep, don’t lower yourself. It takes practice (and isn’t as good for training purposes as a slow, controlled down), but if you’re going for reps it will greatly increase the number you can do.
[quote]devildog_jim wrote:
Drop after each rep, don’t lower yourself. [/quote]
I had a go on a proper bar today and can definitely see the benefit of dropping. I let go of the bar at the top and re-gripped it once I was halfway down, seemed much harder when I tried to go back to the regular ones I was doing, so thanks for the tip (thanks to ShaneM too).
Next attempt at the 90 second pace will be saturday, not holding my breath for anything special but an improvement from the ones in the park is a must.
[quote]rephore wrote:
I hope you win man. What is your goal? What time?[/quote]
This guy has set the standard at 1:34, it’s doable but he could go so much quicker. I’m hoping to go under his time but that’s no good if lots of others do it, so i’m aiming for a top 3 (whatever is required of me for that).
On Saturday I did 12, 8, 6, 6, 5, 3 in 1:53 with the new technique, should have video’d it but didn’t think I could dip under 2 mins so easily.
[quote]gregron wrote:
^^those count as pullups for the competition? I thought they were supposed to be full ROM with no kicking/kipping (also known as cheating)[/quote]
I mean that’s the really scrappy end of what counts, he’s probably given more leeway than anyone else entering. The majority of those were full RoM, and I didn’t know that the kicking action he was doing was giving that much of an advantage (looking at it again the last 5 shouldn’t have counted). In an ideal world it would be 40 perfect pullups and although that won’t happen i’d like to do it with minimal kipping action.
Edit: The competition holder posted this as an example of what counts.
That’s some bad technique near the end, so there don’t seem to be too many rules, just “40 long arm pullups”.
thats impressive for a woman. very impressive… but those are not dead hangs… she went only 2/3 of the way down… not fully extended. a dead hang is start off still fully extended, go all the way up till chin in over the bar, then fully extend at bottom (arms straight)till body is still, then repeat…impossible to have a speed contest on this movement…
It’s funny because he’s an example of what not to do in this thread, but konstantin has by far the biggest strongest back posted so far and I find him doing 55 cheap pull ups at a BW of about 300 pounds far more impressive than anything else posted.
Kinda makes me want to train like he does rather than do the challenge.
