I wondered if you were doing sets on the minute! I really like that style of training. I feel like the 40seconds of rest you get is enough to recover sufficiently but it also works your work capacity nicely. Also it is a much easier way to time rest periods lol.
I know what you mean about back workouts feeling repeatable, I think back is definitely the hardest bodypart to injure lol. And I agree that a high pull:push ratio is a good thing.
Thursday 10/9 (PM)
83 Pull-ups (20 Minutes)
Friday 10/10 (AM)
Bikram Yoga Class (90 Minutes)
…about an hour later…
70 Pull-ups (17 Minutes)
Taking today off work so I went to the gym shortly after yoga class and did a little pull-up session.
Off for another weekend with my GF, this time with her family as well.
Saturday 10/11 (AM)
Dumbbell Workout (40 Minutes)
Staying in a hotel today so I took advantage of the hotel dumbbell rack and just did a slew of shoulder work (lateral raises, front raises, rear-delt work), curl variants with the 25s and 30s, and some high-rep dumbbell rows with the 50s.
Sunday 10/12 (AM)
Push-ups and Dumbbell Workout (20 Minutes)
Sunday 10/12 (PM)
Spinning Bike (20 Minutes)
Got on the bike for a bit to do some cardio during the afternoon football games. Now relaxing on the couch for the Eagles game.
Back to the gym for pull-ups every morning this week.
Monday 10/13 (AM)
77 Pull-ups (20 Minutes)
Monday 10/13 (PM)
Spinning Bike (20 Minutes)
Tuesday 10/14 (AM)
60 Pull-ups super-setted with Seated Rows (20 Minutes)
Tuesday 10/14 (PM)
A1. 10 Pushups
A2. 10 Kettlebell Swings
Twelve rounds (plus two bonus sets of pushups) in 20 minutes.
Wednesday 10/15 (AM)
A1. Pull-ups 5xBW
A2. Seated Rows 5x100
Twelve rounds in 20 minutes.
Wednesday 10/15 (PM)
Spinning Bike (20 Minutes)
Thursday 10/16 (AM)
77 Pull-ups (20 Minutes)
Feeling a bit run-down; I started out strong with 10 sets of 6 but petered out towards the end.
I think I’ve been shorting myself a bit on sleep lately. Will make that a focus for the next few weeks.
Thursday 10/16 (PM)
Spinning Bike (20 Minutes)
Friday 10/17 (AM)
83 Pull-ups (23 Minutes)
[quote]ActivitiesGuy wrote:
Friday 10/17 (AM)
83 Pull-ups (23 Minutes)[/quote]
Are you discovering anything about what contributes to better pull-up performance days?
There are probably faster ways to get to 100 - you know, some kind of complicated Russian progression scheme or something - but I like what you are doing. I don’t know, something about just going after it every day, day after day…I think it strengthens our subconscious belief in the power of habit. And it teaches us a little about patience. Good stuff.
[quote]Serge A. Storms wrote:
Are you discovering anything about what contributes to better pull-up performance days?
[/quote]
Nothing besides the obvious: sleep, nutrition, bodyweight.
Sleep: this definitely seems to have an effect; I know that I was short on sleep over the past week or two, and I think the cumulative fatigue caught up with me a little.
Nutrition: I had been the type who never bothered with intra-workout nutrition, but lately I’ve started sipping a sports drink between sets (if I take one small sip between each of my 12-18 sets of pull-ups, I’ll kill the 16-ounce bottle by the end of the workout). I’ll want to track this a little more to see if it has any effect, because I’ve just been doing that for a few days. My workouts are not so demanding that they REQUIRE intra-workout nutrition, but I do think it might help a little. I am a semi-IF’er that has the majority of my calories at night (AM coffee, do my pull-ups at the gym, then have a glass of milk and gnaw on some beef jerky throughout the day, go home and do my evening spinning bike or kettlebell workout, followed by large dinner with some combination of meat and veggies, some of my usual dinners are documented in twojarslave’s kitchen thread), so it might be useful to consume a bit of simple carbs intraworkout.
Bodyweight: I’ve only been weighing myself every week or two, but I imagine that if I started weighing myself daily, I would notice that had an impact, too. Probably days where I’ve let my weight drift up would correspond to those where I’ve struggled to get 80 within the 20-minute time frame. I haven’t checked for a few days, so I’ll get on the scale this weekend and see where I am. Still trying to nudge myself back down to the mid-190’s…but I’m fine if that takes a little while (see below).
[quote]Serge A. Storms wrote:
There are probably faster ways to get to 100 - you know, some kind of complicated Russian progression scheme or something - but I like what you are doing. I don’t know, something about just going after it every day, day after day…I think it strengthens our subconscious belief in the power of habit. And it teaches us a little about patience. Good stuff.[/quote]
I think the reason this appeals to me is that it feels very sustainable. You’re surely right that a different progression scheme might get me to 100 a bit faster, but I want to find a strong approach that I can sustain for the long haul. And I don’t really get bored by one thing; I was a competitive distance runner for awhile and ran, ran, ran some more. I can do pull-ups for 20 minutes a day, eternally, without getting sick of that.
As I mention above re: bodyweight, I don’t really want to crash-diet myself down to 190 and then loosen the reins all over again. I want to slowly peel myself from the summer high of 211 to the most-recent-weight of 205 (last week) down to 195-ish by the holiday season, knowing that what I’m doing feels like a sustainable long-term approach to lean and healthy living.
Friday 10/17 (PM)
Spinning Bike (20 Minutes)
Saturday 10/18 (AM)
100 Pull-ups (20 Minutes)
!!!
Big PR. I don’t know if it was a little extra “it’s the weekend” energy, since I got to sleep in a bit more and didn’t have to worry about going to work afterwards. I did these outdoors (on the pull-up bar at Carnegie Mellon) and maybe I drew a little extra energy from nature. But for some reason, today I was able to roll through 20 straight sets of 5 every minute on the minute.
Hard work starting to pay off. Gotta keep striving for improvement. Next goal is to be able to crank these out as 10 straight sets of 10 reps.
Congrats! You earned it!