On Day of ABBH, we’re meant to do 10 reps of dips for chest and 10 of chinups for back. It says the load is 60% of 1RM, but it doesn’t matter because I could prob only do 5 rep max for both exercises!
Considering this is T-Nation, most of you guys must be a lot stronger and can prob do 10 rep chinups/dips with ease, but if anyone is in my position what should I do?
Thanks,
San.
You have a couple choices I think.
A. Use lat pull downs instead.
B. Use band-assisted chins.
C. Switch the horizontal and vertical upper body days. That way you are doing a 103 for chins and 510 for the horizontal days.
I’m also doing ABBH…I just got started with day 27 today (look at ABBH II if you don’t know how to proceed past day 23).
Personally the dips aren’t the problem…its’ the chinups. I can also only do 5-7 for each set.
Now, I don’t know if this is the best way or not, but I do as many as I can…until one short of failure.
In other words, if I would feel failure coming up in rep #6, I would stop at 5…(and in the following set if failure would seem to be coming at #5, I’d stop at 4).
The idea is not to go to failure on ABBH, if I’m not mistaken…close on the last set, but NO failure.
Again, maybe this isn’t the best way…I hope others will have some input.
Keep at it!
What I did is pull a switcheroo, so that chins were on the high sets of low reps days.
That way I could do them.
People here frown on pulldowns a lot, but that is another alternative – as is the gravitron or whatnot.
Try making chins a bit easier somehow -zeb has suggested using a smith machine to do them instead of the regular chins bar. You could always try using a spotter too to give you some help on the last few reps. I think that the band assisted chins somebody else suggested would be the best idea.
The other posts made me rethink my methods. While I fully respect the other’s ideas (and had considered them previously when I started my ABBH)…my introspection has pointed these things out:
Any assistance given (by bands or personal assistance or device) still compensates for what otherwise would be muscle failure. ABBH is not designed to induce failure, to my knowledge (but I could be wrong). So in my opinion, these methods are not the most practical answer. (Please take no offense anyone).
If you switch the 5x10 days and the 10x3 days, what do you do when you get to day 25 and later? You have to switch reps/sets then anyways…and you have the same problem as before (not being able to fullfill the base requirements). So, again, this is not the best answer.
To be fair…there is not a perfect answer to this question (nor any question, really). So maybe my ideas are NOT the best for you…huh, or me for that matter…hehe
Anyway, my original idea still makes the most sense to me…and I’d gladly welcome anyone to please discuss (not argue) with me why my thoughts are incorrect. How else can we learn unless we discuss things, right?
After all, “it’s for life,” right?
Trailblazer, I think Waterbury has said before to use pull-downs if you can’t do the chins. His workouts are panned very carefully, so try to follow his set/rep recommendations as closely as possible. When he wrote abbh, he suggested some exercises, but those aren’t the exercises you have to use. You can substitute chins for any vertical pulling exercise you could dream up. Same goes for any other day of abbh.
Good Luck
Agree with smallnomore. I did ABBH and substituted chins with pulldowns, and still had good results. Chad has certain volumes he recommends for a reason, and if you can’t perform that exercise for the recommended volume, it makes sense to substitute with an exercise hitting the same muscle, in the same plane, to get the volume. I’m not saying you wouldn’t get any results if you did chins for less reps though. Either way, it will still benefit you. Decide for yourself, and I’m sure you will be happy with the results regardless.
Okay…Good points everyone. Thanks.
I stand corrected.
Although I originally did a search, apparently I did not delve into it deeper.
My apologies.
Check out this link to other vertical exercises:
http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=449862
Keep training.
Here are the substitutes for those who aren’t strong enough to perform pull-ups and dips, respectively: