The magic 50 - weighted
by Scott Bird
October 25, 2006
5 comments
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One of my mid-term goals is the completion of a full range one-armed chin-up. Prior to that I’d like to knock off 50 reps (in a single set) of the standard two-armed variety; although I’m not sure how much carryover there will be. Still, it’s a good start.
This week has again centred around the first part of this goal - the ability to complete 50 reps of bodyweight chin-ups. As with last week, I gradually added weight to a few of the sets; culminating with 5×10@+5kg yesterday. That was more than enough to make sure the lungs were working.
My current strategy is two pronged : the weighted ‘magic 50’ (as above) will alternate with the heavy rep days (working up to a max triple or double), with a day of rest in between. The rest days (from chin-ups, at least) are filled with brief ‘normal’ workouts; a few rack pulls here, a few floor presses there. Only time will tell how effective this is.
Once I can manage 5×10@+20kg, I’ll switch to increasing reps on the standard bodyweight chin-up. I’d guess it’ll be starting from 20-30 by then.
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Comments
Unfortunately, there isn’t very much carryover at all.
It took 2 years of training to get the one arm chin, and now I can only do 22 regular chins as one set fresh). A year ago, I could do 25 regular chins at the end of my weighted chin workout.
So… maximal strength up, muscular endurance slightly down.
Posted by: bdckr | October 26, 2006 12:03 AM
I agree with the previous commenter. Max strength does not equal endurance and vice versa. In our max strength workouts, Nancy and I note that weight lifted goes up but when we switch to hypertrophy, much lower weight at high volume is harder than it was before max strength.
I think 50 chin ups is an endurance goal. Of course, to pursue such a goal, you need to be able to actually chin body weight. Some of the metrics we’ve been working with suggest that you may need to be able to chin at least double body weight before you can get 30–50 reps at body weight on a routine basis.
Posted by: Bud Gibson | October 26, 2006 12:58 AM
Thanks guys. Bdckr, congrats. What sort of exercises seemed to help most?
Bud, your second paragraph appears to contradict your first, suggesting that (although heavy) there is a correlation between max weight and endurance. I tend to agree with your initial thinking however, so I’ll mix it up a little more.
Posted by: Scott | October 26, 2006 8:42 AM
No, the idea is that to get your weight up, you have to engage in strength building. What happens I think is that it is more like a step function. Increase weight you can push. Increase endurance at that weight.
Posted by: Bud Gibson | October 27, 2006 4:41 AM
Thanks, Scott.
If you haven’t seen these yet, you should check out this article on Dragondoor, and this one from Beastskills.
Offset chins with weight helped the most. Instead of using a towel, I used a rope tied to the bar, with knots tied off starting at 18” below the bar, and every 6” after. The rope helped me get a better feel for the kind of rotation that happens using only one arm, while the extra weight helped develop the pulling strength. Tying knots made it easier to measure progress i.e. 1st knot, 2nd knot, etc.(like fist lengths on a towel in the Dragondoor article). Once I got to 4 reps on the 4th knot, I started again at the 1st knot with extra weight.
Having a weight vest (instead of weight hanging off a belt) was useful, since I could do regular and offset chins (the concentric portion) as fast as possible without worrying about the weight banging around.
Grippers and one arm dead hangs (with or without extra weight) were good. Nothing worse than feeling like you’re slipping off the bar.
The workout structure was chins twice a week: one higher volume weighted 2 arm chin workout, and one low volume higher intensity 1 arm training.
Posted by: bdckr | October 27, 2006 5:15 AM