I have a question concerning EDT. I don’t have access to a gym currently and I have decided to focus on bodyweight exercises. I do regular pushups and pullups, supersetting them in EDT fashion. My PR zone is 22 minutes long. The first training session using this format went well - in this time frame I did 42 pullups and 275 pushups.
Today I tried to beat that but felt tired and weaker - I only managed 36 pullups and 280 pushups. And this time I pushed myself to absolute failure - I couldn’t rise an inch when I tried the 37th pullup.
The aim of this workout is to make me stronger at pullups and pushups - I’m 200 pounds and if I pushed myself to the limit, I can probably do 10 pullups with good form but no more, which is kind of embarrassing. As concerns pushups - the best I can do is 150 continuous reps.
My short term goals are 20 pullups and 200 pushups without stopping. It would be nice to raise the pullups even higher than that but they are quite difficult for me.
Charles Staley says you have to beat the previous workout everytime. What happens if I can’t beat it? I do these workouts three times a week. Do I need more rest, like two or three days between sessions? I also run 2 miles every two or three days. Is it possible that this hampers my recovery?
The pumps I get from EDT are incredible but I don’t care - I just want to be able to do more pullups and pushups. Functional strength is what I’m after - being stronger and being able to sustain that strength for longer periods of time.
Anyways, what would you do if you were in my situation and failed to improve from your last EDT workout? Is the PR zone too long? Do I need more rest days?
Second, the usual fashion in which to do EDT is to find your 10rm on a movement and then start off doing sets of 5 until you can’t do 5 good reps then go to 4.
Third, do not repeat the same training sessions in a week.
Fourth, make the push ups more difficult by putting your feet up on something solid to distribute more of the weight to your arm and chest area or your resistance bands of some sort across your back.
Fifth, try a 15 minute PR zone.
Sixth, I’ve got no sixth. Who do you think I am, Charles Staley?
If your performance is tapering off or declining, it could be a sign that your accumulated fatigue is catching up with you. Take a week off and see. The worst that could happen is that you stay the same.
You could also be coming down with a cold, flu, food poisoning, or any other kind of illness and won’t find out until later tonight or in a couple days.
You could’ve missed a lot of sleep since the last session, drank too much, ate too much crap, or any number of things.
Look back on your rest and nutrition since your last training session. Look for anomalies.
It’s likely you’ve accumulated too much fatigue and need to take a week off to fully enjoy the effects of supercompensation.
How long was the break between training sessions? did I miss that? At the onset, since it isn’t a 10 rep max obviously, what is your guess inre to your max? Do you start at a point where you are only doing 1/2 that? Since it is bodyweight, perhaps you could slightly increase the local rest time by throwing in 20 bodyweight squats? Hard without a gym. Is a gym in your future?
[quote]Mike Sullivan wrote:
First of all EDT kicks ass.
Second, the usual fashion in which to do EDT is to find your 10rm on a movement and then start off doing sets of 5 until you can’t do 5 good reps then go to 4.
Third, do not repeat the same training sessions in a week.
Fourth, make the push ups more difficult by putting your feet up on something solid to distribute more of the weight to your arm and chest area or your resistance bands of some sort across your back.
Fifth, try a 15 minute PR zone.
Sixth, I’ve got no sixth. Who do you think I am, Charles Staley?[/quote]
Thanks for the advice, Mike. Yes I know I’m supposed to pick my 10rep max and do sets of five. My max is 10 pullups, but I do 4 reps on the first set, 3 on the second and 2 in each set till the end - I simply can’t do more. I get tired real quick. If I were to only do sets of 5 I would burn out in just two-three sets.
[quote]jp_dubya wrote:
How long was the break between training sessions? did I miss that? At the onset, since it isn’t a 10 rep max obviously, what is your guess inre to your max? Do you start at a point where you are only doing 1/2 that? Since it is bodyweight, perhaps you could slightly increase the local rest time by throwing in 20 bodyweight squats? Hard without a gym. Is a gym in your future?[/quote]
Last session was on Thursday, this was on Saturday - one day of rest. 10 reps is the absolute most I can do with pullups. I started with a set of 4, then a set of three, I became real tired and I did sets of two till the end of the workout but even with that I hit failure before the end of the PR zone.
I don’t think I’ll go to a gym soon. In fact I can say that I’m pretty much done with gyms. I used to be a powerlifter for four years - not interested in weights anymore. They just don’t develop the body as bodyweights and running.
I’m currently searching for a way to do bodyweights more efficiently and get stronger at them. I thought that EDT might help, but if I continue feeling weaker I’ll switch back to the GTG type of routine that I used to do.
For me real strength is in bodyweights. When I was in powerlifting I could bench 360 pounds but in real life could not do much with my bodyweight. Heck, even a simple 1 mile run left me gasping for breath.
Thanks to powerlifting (and a shitty diet) i weighed 215 at a height of 5"10. I don’t care if it’s muscle or fat - it is unhealthy. Bodyweights help me regulate my weight.
Last session was on Thursday, this was on Saturday - one day of rest. [/quote]
then it seems the most logical thing to do is to increase the rest days. If Thursday was that fatiguing, and you were whipped Saturday, 1 day rest, increase that to at least 3.
Another alt may be since you were doing chin, pushup as one day, rest 1 or 2 days, do handstand pushups and bodyweight rows as a PR zone, rest 1 or 2 days, back to chin/pushup. I won’t question your choice of going to BW exercises. Whatever you do to pit a muscle against resistance is training.