[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
[quote]Facepalm_Death wrote:
[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
[quote]Facepalm_Death wrote:
[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:
[quote]stokes1989 wrote:
[quote]spk wrote:
^^^^^
great job…
and i agree…
pussys… an ego thing i guess. cant do pullups so they put a ton of weight on the bar and do the lat pulldown with horrible form… practice pullups AND THE CORRECT WAY TO DO LAT PULLDOWNS…
real men do pullups!!![/quote]
Thats an undisputible fact! I freaking LOVE pull-ups, they are by far my favorite exercise. I prefer to do them with legs elevated to parallel to incorperate some core into them (plus try doing 15 pull ups with feet elevated and a 20lb weight vest on, absolute murder!)
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The thing alot of people don’t realize is that most people dont do pullups because they cant. Most people dont deadlift or back squat either. They can’t do them. People do things they are good at as a general rule. The same reason they don’t do pullups is the same reason they can’t do lat pulldowns correctly.
Form is so often discussed in the forums. Working on form when doing exercises is secondary for most people, most people are not at the “form” level. If you are at the “form” level that means you CAN do the exercise your attempting, you are just working on doing it properly.
Make sure you pull through your elbows, hollow body, blah, blah, blah… It’s all DESCRIBING functions that are working, you can play with these WHEN your body is working properly.
People read Ben Bruno’s new article with all the exotic pullup variations or some sexy new programming scheme. Dumb motherfuckers skipped like 50 steps. Like running for president after you graduate middle school.
The VAST majority of people are at the corrective exercise level and they are worried about special exercises and programming. Makes me laugh sometimes they will never get anywhere.
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While what you say about most people being unable to do proper pull-ups is true, the reasoning is not generally because they need “corrective” exercises in order to be able to do so. In most cases people can’t do them due to a lack of strength in the correct muscles. So what most people need are proper regressions of pull-ups are an understanding of how to correctly “scale up” the exercises towards pull-ups. If that was what you meant by “corrective”, though, then yeah I agree.[/quote]
Many people struggle with pullups because of bad proprioception. They have a very rounded back and shoulders and try to pull with their arms.
While weakness in the key muscles groups is an issue, doing arm dominant pullups and pulldowns will not strengthen the key back muscles. Many of these people need to do corrective exercises for learning to activate the lats, lower/mid traps, and rhomboids[/quote]
Totally agree with your first comment.
Also agree that doing more arm dominant pull-ups and pull-downs won’t fix the problem. I was never arguing otherwise.
But, properly regressed pull-ups are among the best back exercises; you don’t need to do fancy corrective exercises if you know how to cue correctly.[/quote]
Think about how information gets disseminated around the gym. Nobody in most gyms has even heard negative reps or anything like that. But they see somebody using a pulldown machine and ask their buddy “whats that” and their buddy says “that works your lats”. So they throw it into their workouts and get the weight moving by hyperextending their back and using their biceps. On top of that, their shoulders are probably rounded completely from benchpressing all the time.
I don’t mean to come off too cynical, but this is sort of the reality of the situation. A properly regressed pullup program will get results, thats true. But my personal experience from formerly sucking at pullups was that corrective exercises improved my pullup ability without really even doing pullups. And then when the time came to move on to stricter full range of motion pullups (chest to the bar) I found that corrective exercises were the best tool for that. I guess I really don’t even think of them as “corrective” in a physical therapy sense, but more preactivation exercises
I think the best cue for full range pullups is “lead with the chest” and when this doesn’t click for people its because they can’t activate the rhomboids or lower/mid traps voluntarily. And they won’t be able to in a lat pulldown or during a static hold at the top of a pullup either. Doing negatives and static holds might lead to improvement over time, but if poor scapular retraction/depression is the real issue why not attack it directly?[/quote]
I don’t disagree with your overall point about how information is disseminated in gyms across the world. Also take into effect gym culture, our society as a whole and the focus on instant gratification (“instant messaging”, fast food, texting, social media sites), vanity/ego, and the ridiculous amount of information (much of it incomplete, or even worse incorrect) at our fingertips on a daily basis and it’s easy to see why so many people get things “wrong” to start with.
Also understand that I am not against “activation” exercises (or even corrective exercises) in all cases; those exercises can and do serve a useful purpose given the correct context. But the best way that the body learns movement patterns is by actually performing those specific movement patterns; that’s just how the neuromuscular system works. So while there may be some people who really need things like TENS units, or specific “activation/correction” exercises to innervate truly dormant muscles due to injuries or perhaps in some cases prolonged lack of use, most simply need to perform the necessary movement pattern with a light enough resistance to be able to actually utilize the desired muscles/and the correct cuing.
Now, is that knowledge widespread throughout the gym population? No, not really. Even most trainers that I have worked along side don’t do this well (if at all). But the information is out there if you are willing to seek it out. Most of my knowledge on the subject has been gained through my own self education (I have a formal degree in exercise science as well along with being NASM certified), self experimentation, and then applying that knowledge with my clients. Yes, occasionally I’ll throw in an “activation/corrective” exercise for someone who just can’t get something through normal cuing, but most can IME if you scale properly.
All of that said, if you find that such exercises are beneficial for you, then I’m not going to tell you to stop doing them. I simply have found a way that generally works better for me personally and that I feel works better with the people I train.[/quote]
If you train other people then I guess that trumps my point of view.
But I’ll ask, do you train your clients to do full range chest to bar pullups? If so, what do you do when they struggle to get those last few inches? This problem is root of my whole point
From my experience, the ONLY reason corrective exercises have value in this context is because they facilitate leading with the chest and they improved my range of motion because of it. That’s the only reason I would defend them; if getting the chin over the bar is considered acceptable and clients consistently improve their performance with that form then corrective exercises are unnecessary. But leading with the chest is still wise to do even with a shorter range of motion because pulling with rounded shoulders can cause damage
