Does anyone have any thoughts on the best way of maximizing strength AND endurance?
I know a lot of people say you can’t have both.
Recently the world record holder for weighted pullups posted on the T-Nation fb page. As well as holding the record for weighted 1RM his pb for max reps is 39. He maintained that you could have both but you need to keep cycling between strength and endurance.
From what he’s said, he has an abnormally high percentage of fast twitch fibers in his back muscles. His max reps at 80% of 1RM is only 5. As I understand it, the norm is for back muscles to be more slow twitch than fast? He also maintained that past the beginner stage increased strength adds nothing to endurance. To increase reps you need to do reps.
How much does dominant fiber type play a part in potential to do well in both? How much does dominant fiber type play a part in how you should train if you want both?
Any thoughts at all on the topic of training for both strength and endurance would be interesting.
Ecchastang, mainly I have pullups in mind at the moment. I actually have a year long challenge with one of the trainers in my gym to see who can do best in 1RM (as percentage of body-weight) and max reps at body-weight. He started out with 20 pullups and a 1RM of more than 50% over body-weight. I’m coming from way behind, but I’m going to give it my best shot It’s just for fun - a little training goal.
I’m very interested in street workout, extreme calisthenics - that kind of thing. At this stage I don’t really know exactly where I’m going with it. Christian Thibaudeau gave me some awesome advice on another thread on how to structure my training to maximize strength whilst minimizing increases in mass. For the short term I’m sticking with only that. But trying to get my thoughts together on longer term. I’m going to need good endurance too.
I guess I’m just trying to increase my knowledge at the moment so any thoughts on the topic you might have would be of interest.
In my experience, maximum number of reps for pull-ups correlate very well to your weighted pull-up 1RM until at least 20+ reps.
I would not suggest any specific endurance training before you reach that point, but instead shoot for typical 1RM increasing workouts - for me that means working up to a weighted 1RM some days, and heavy work either on weighted pull-ups or lat pulldown machine in the 6-8 rep range some days.
Above that you might benefit from using specific endurance training workouts. In my own experience, doing max rep sets does not work well, since it limits the volume I’m able to handle. I do a max rep set every 3 months or so.
Last time I tried to increase endurance, I was doing 800 pull-ups over a two week period, doing 30-50 every day, except for one rest day and one day doing 100+ pull-ups as fast as possible. That time, I increased my rep max by 7 compared to about 3 months earlier.
Everyone I know who has a higher rep count than me, also have higher 1RM weighted pull-up as a percentage of their bodyweight, which leads me to believe that even in the higher rep ranges, 1RM is a good predictor of rep count potential (but you also need to do some endurance training to reach your peak).
For reference my current best is 35 reps with no rest, and 1RM of 80% of bodyweight added on weighted pull-up.
Also, I can do at most 6 reps with 80% of my max in weighted pull-ups. In lat pulldown however, I can do 10 reps with 80% of my max. I don’t know what that says about slow-twitch / fast-twitch.
maestro, thank you SO much for that. That’s very interesting.
Your ‘statistics’ are similar to those of the world record holder - Steven Proto. I wonder then if a high proportion of fast twitch fibers in the “pullup muscles” is best for achieving both strength and endurance? So many people say they can’t do both.
I’m curious as to whether things will work the same way for me. In particular, the male / female differences. I’m really very much a beginner with pullups so my stats don’t count for much. I’m still at the stage where I get to 10 reps, improve form and go back to 5, work my way back up to 10 - repeat.
But for what it’s worth, here’s my stats. This was all in the same period a couple of months back. I’ve since improved form to put all the load on my back (I was using biceps a lot back then) and numbers have slashed since then.
1RM - 80kg (at 65kg bodyweight)
Max Reps - 9 (My bodyweight is 80% of my 1RM so this is also my max reps at 80% of bodyweight)
100 Reps in 14 minutes 18 seconds.
Most in 24 hours: 670 (in 5 hours).
My pattern is more in keeping with the female world record holder - so better at the longer haul stuff.
My ability to do repeated small sets with recoveries is very good compared to most people - I do more high volume (so repeated small sets) at 80% of my 1RM than most seem to manage at 65%. But my max reps and 1RM is pretty poor still (but it IS early days in my training so I’m not worried).
I feel I should try and take advantage of this ability I have to do lots of small sets. I can do it day in and day out without recovery problems. I don’t know if anyone has any thoughts on what this might be? I figured maybe smaller muscles not tearing themselves apart so much? There is research that shows female muscle copes better with endurance but no conclusions drawn as to why.
I had already decided to start out by targeting strength - initially aiming for neural adaptations. I had been puzzling over how to keep endurance ticking over but based on what you say I’ll just forget about that for now. At the end of the day, there is only one way for me to find out what works!
I’d love to hear more peoples’ pullup stats. So 1RM, Max Reps and Max Reps at 80% of 1RM. Just out of curiosity.
i don’t know my 1RM, but at a body weight of about 153, I did 100 pullups in 4 min 45 sec about 2 weeks ago, and a couple weeks before that, hit 62 pullups in 5 minutes with 35# added. The last time I did a max set was many months ago, and did 37, but that was before doing CT’s chinup challenge where I did over 1500 pullups in February, all with 35# added.
Your 100 rep time is very impressive compared to your maximum number of reps. It may be that you have worked more on recovering between sets than on maximum repetition capability, possibly your 1RM strength is what is limiting you at the moment.
I have some women at my gym that can do quite a lot of pull-ups, and although I don’t know them personally, I have observed that they often work out by doing lots of sets of weighted pull-ups in the 3-5 rep range. One example is the woman at 1:00 in this video, doing 22 pull-ups according to the rules in that particular competition:
You’re all demoralizing me now - just when I thought 10 wasn’t too bad. I need to work harder at this!!! LOL
Here’s some more stats:
Female world record holder, Chrystal West.
She weights just 108 pounds, so very light - very little fat OR muscle bulk.
She set the female world record for most reps with 36 consecutive pullups.
1 Rep max with 79 pounds of added weight (73% of her bodyweight added).
8 reps with 45 pounds added (40% of her bodyweight added).
148 pullups in 10 minutes.
1210 pullups in 80 minutes.
Significantly lower relative strength but better endurance than the male record holder?
If my calculations are correct, with 45 pounds added to her bodyweight that’s around 80% of her 1RM and she managed 8 reps. According to the charts that’s still fast twitch dominant.
Male world record holder (for weighted), Steven Proto.
100 reps in 8:38 with letting go.
36 Reps
22 Reps with 45 lbs
12 Reps with 100 lbs
5 Reps with 160 lbs
1 rep with 211 lbs
1 rep with 206.2 Official Guinness World Record
5 Reps at 80% of 1RM
There’s info here on a way to get an idea if you’re fast or slow twitch dominant. It’s based on info from Christian Thibaudeau?s book ?The Black Book of Training Secrets?.
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maestro - thank you for that. If you ever do get any inside info on training from these ladies please do pass it on!!
I started doing some facebook challenges back in February. I’d been able to do pullups for several months at this point, but mainly struggling to get one good one up tot that point. It was the GORUCK pullup challenges so 1000 reps in 30 days; 2,500 reps in 68 days and 5,000 reps in 68 days. (You get a cool patch for completing the challenges!!!). I did the 1k and 2.5k - still to do the 5k.
So yes, pretty much all of my pullup training has been done in a ‘grease the groove’ approach. I never really did any weighted pullups in training. The 15kg over bodyweight came from bodyweight reps.
EDIT: That pullup event in the video looks like really good fun!!!
That guy Proto could definitely beat 100 reps in 8 minutes if he practiced it 2-3 times. I wouldn’t put too much faith into analyses of fast-twitch vs. slow-twitch, it seems to me an insignificant individual factor compared to type of training. Don’t be afraid to put on weight to gain strength by the way (as long as it is mainly muscle). It’s true that most people who easily can do many pull-ups don’t weigh much, but if you use that weight gain mainly to gain pull-up strength it will serve you in the end. The person I know personally that has the highest rep max weighs over 85 kg and competes in events that also involve leg strength.
I’ve always run as part of my training. I’ve therefore read a fair bit on running training theory and followed running groups. The ‘gospel’ according to runners is that you need to do lots and lots of mileage. The key, according to them, to getting faster at even 3k distance was building weekly mileage. Some insisted that you never had to get your heart rate above 120 bpm - in time, and with enough mileage you just get faster and faster at that effort.
Most would include a couple of speed sessions a week. I was always getting lynched on running forums for saying that unless your goal was to be an elite runner you could get good results on extremely low mileage, high intensity training. And I always did. My feeling is that for most things fitness wise, you can go the low intensity, high volume route OR the high intensity, low volume route - and any combination in between. You only need to do both to get to the absolute maximum of your potential.
That’s what I’m shooting for with pulllups (and calisthenics in general) - the absolute maximum of my potential. So I want to try and understand all the theory as best as I can. And I just love the theory
I’m guessing that our muscle fiber distribution, along with past training experience, dominant energy systems etc will probably determine how we choose to train. I read one interview with the female world record holder and she said her approach was to make sure she never did fewer reps than she’d done before. So always doing her max reps every time she trained. I’m sure she didn’t do it this way literally, but the very opposite of what you’re saying worked for you. Yet she only manages 8 reps at 80% of her 1RM so she’s testing pretty fast-twitch too.
The bodyweight thing does bother me a bit. I do take on board what you’re saying and totally accept that it may well not matter. But all the good female pulluppers are lightweights. I’m 65kg (140lbs) - my guess is that I can probably get away with loosing about 2kg of fat - not much more. I’ve already lost about 1kg of fat (at a guess). Weight is slowly creeping up though whilst fat levels go down (I just eat normally - don’t under or overeat). I haven’t even started training in the ‘mass building’ zone. So I do want to tread carefully here and at least monitor what’s happening. Remember - as a woman, even if I cut fat levels to a minimum I’m still carrying 200% more deadweight than a man (5% vs 15%). So I need to try and not have any ‘inefficient’ muscle mass.
I really do appreciate all your information and advice. I am going to go down the route you suggest of building strength first. Forget about endurance for the time being.
It’s just for fun - a little training goal.