I am a trainer and have been trying to help a female cop increase her number of pull-ups. She currently can not even do one pull-up. Her lower body is huge (very muscular and some body fat around 24%.) I am trying to lean up her lower body and then concentrate on strengthing her back with pull-up negatives. We have been doing upper body day 1 - lower body day 2 - day 3 rest and then repeat. We have been doing 5 sets of pullup negatives and 5 sets of gravitron pull-ups. Legs I am just doing High reps and little rest more like a fat burning workout. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Rob
Don’t worry about going for any number of reps on the gravitron, just get it to where she can do bodyweight pullups ASAP, then do ladders (good article on Clarence Bass’ site about using it for pullups). Get the yohimbe going (studies suggest it’s more effective in lower body fat reduction, with the side effect of increased sexual sensitivity).
Wouldn’t doing heavier, lower reps work better for legs if she’s trying to lean out? I’m under the impression that a lower rep scheme is better for hardening muscles (resting tension) and higher reps would be more for building mass (water, glycogen retention). It seems like the goal here is to go for strength. Also, what’s the verdict on deads carrying over to pull ups? Great back and leg workout.
I had not done pullups in about a month maybe more, but the other day I did them and they were easy. All I have been doing is deadlifts, and powercleans for pulling exercises. My girlfriend Patricia who also posts here had the same results.
Yeah! We repped out 3-sets of pullups with no problems. Wild. I believe the deads and cleans really helped here.
only direct effect of deadlifts and pullups i can think of is the shared grip strength
Thats a tough one. When they can’t do one, the natural tendency is to gravitate them to the pulldown machine, and I applaud you for not doing so. My best return on time investment is when I have, like you, them go to negatives. Here is the catch however. I found that if I have them doing the negatives too slow, then they burn out quick. I have tried on others and myself negatives for up to 10 seconds. F that. Flame out occurs real quick. The instant I switched to a 2-3 second negative, multiple sets, getting to one chin occurred much quicker. Steadily add weight, yes ADD ADD WEIGHT to controlled, even tempo negatives and watch their ability to control the descent. The gravitron is good, but I wouldn’t do them the same day. It all depends on her goal. I say forget counting the reps on gravitron rep day and start off at a greater counter weight and do 3-5 sets until technical breakdown, where speed of rep is decreased noticeably. 3-5 minutes rest, 3-5 sets. The deadlift suggestion is absolutely dead on, too.
Don?t forget to strengthen the arms, they often turn out to be the weak link.
Since she cant do one rep yet, have her just try to do a negative rep. In other words, help her get up on the bar and then let her try to hold herself as best she can during the descent. Since the eccentric is where she will develop her strength, she will be there in no time. After that, ladders or German Volume Training might work well. If she is trying to decrease her leg size, you could try to eliminate eccentric parts of lifts with legs (squats, lunges, etc)
Ladders.
Charles Poliquin describes on his site the protocol he used to take his female athletes from 0 to 12 pullups in three months. I tried it over the summer with some of my girls , and it worked pretty well. But don’t forget arm strength!!
Someone mentioned not doing extensively long negatives. I found this interesting, since Poliquin recommends doing 4 sets of 30 second negatives in one of his back routines. I’ve been really working towards getting to a point where I can do some pullups for reps, and was under the impression that a long negative would be of greater value than a shorter negative - was I totally misinterpreting something?
What about the frequency and volume of work. We have been doing around 10 sets of back 1st and 4th day. Is this okay? Inbetween sets we do chest and rotator cuff exercises. Then leg days are on the 2nd and 5th day. 3rd and 6th day rest.
bump