Build Strength FAST: Two Incredibly Effective Tricks

(Photo: wolleydog)

So as I may have mentioned in the recent post on how to do pull-ups and push-ups, at one time I was able to eke out 3 unassisted pull-ups.

I was so damn proud I ran around telling everyone! But then surgery and a broken arm benched me for 7 months, and I had to start all over. I couldn't hoist myself an inch without 90 lbs of assistance on one of those gravitron contraptions.

And sure, over the past couple months, I made some progress, but despite prodigious amounts of cursing, pouting, and whining, my goal still felt miles away.

But then, about 10 days ago, I tried a new approach, and guess what? I can now complete ONE, count 'em ONE, unassisted pull-up!

For me, this was a huge jump in performance in a very short time.


So, wanna find out what the two secrets to FAST strength building were?

Strength Building Tip Number One: More Frequency, LESS Intensity

Does that make any sense at all? Of course not! And wait until you read the details, because it totally contradicts everything we've been told about how strength training is supposed to happen. I always thought the only way to make progress was to grapple with as huge and nasty a load as you could manage 'til exhaustion, then eat 27 cupcakes to restore your strength take a day or two off to let the muscles build back up even stronger.

But with this method, the idea is to do the exercise as often as possible, while staying as fresh as possible. I got this tip from Jen Sinkler in a post about pull ups over at Experience Life, and almost didn't try it because it sounded completely silly and doomed to failure counter-intuitive.  But it worked!

Apparently this technique came from a book by a dude with a difficult to pronounce name ("Tsatsouline"), and the Experience Life blog post above has more on that if you want to track down the source.  As is probably obvious, I haven't read the book myself and so my advice probably bears no resemblance whatever to how it's actually supposed to be done.

For those of you who like me, are nutty enough to want to try this, here are some step by step instructions:

1. Quit your day job.  (Note: if you are a personal trainer at a well-equipped gym, or you work at home within range of workout equipment, you may be able to skip this step). However, if quitting your day job isn't practical, you may want to use step #7 instead of step #5.

2. Translate your strength goal: What this works best for is dramatically increasing the number of reps of an exercise fairly quickly.  If you want to go from, say, a maximum of 4 push-ups to 10, then you don't need to do any translating.  In my case, however, the goal was doing unassisted chin ups and pull-ups, and I couldn't do any.  But what I could do was about 6 negatives (where you lower yourself slowly from the bar, rather than hoist yourself up).  So I figured if I could use this trick to double my negatives to 12, I'd have a pretty good shot of doing one "real" chin up or pull up.

My advice, then, is to try to find an exercise variation and an intensity that lets you do at least a few reps, but not too many--or this plan will drive you totally apesh#t crazy. (See below).

3.  Find your maximum number of reps.  Just do the target exercise as many times as you can with wrenching something apart or puking.

4.  Divide that number in half.  If it's odd, round DOWN. This is the number of repetitions you'll do in each set.

5.  Here comes the "quit your job" part:  Shoot for one of these half-max sets per hour, most of your waking day until you fatigue, 5 days a week.

6.  Pick your jaw back up off the floor.  Because (a) you can fall well short of this goal and it still works and (b) if you do happen to be at home, it's not nearly as awful as it sounds.  I did about 8 sets a day two days in a row, then took a day off, then repeated the cycle a couple more times.  The thing that's actually surprising?  Because you're not doing that many reps at a time, and you're "fresh" each time, the exercising itself is not even unpleasant.  Plus your muscles have that nice pumped feeling most of the day.

7.  Here's Jen's more practical variation, which you can do just 3 or 4 days a week: Start your workout with the half max set; rest until your heart rate returns to normal, then do another exercise that doesn’t use the same muscles. Rest again, then do another half-max set of your target exercise. Keep repeating. The goal? "Try to bag five to 10 sets with at least five minutes of rest between them."

And the second important Tip for Building Strength Fast?

This one is psychological, rather than physical, so I apologize in advance for requiring you to click an additional link. But just think you how strong your index finger will get as you power your way over to read the rest of the post over at the Cranky Fitness Department of  Life and Wellness Coaching!

Push Ups and Pull Ups for Women, Too!

 

What, you can't do this wearing a weighted vest? What's wrong with you?

(Photo: Amber Karnes)

Finally--the updated 2011 women's guide to pull-ups, push-ups and/or press-ups has arrived!

If you landed here via search engine and are trying to figure how to do your first "real" pullup or pushup, congratulations, you've come to the right place.

But what if you're a regular at Cranky Fitness and saw a post covering very similar ground that I wrote a few years ago?  Well, no worries! If you're a typical Cranky Fitness reader, you have trouble remembering your own phone number. There's not a chance in hell you'll remember what that post said about push-ups and pull-ups, so you're good too.

As to the guys? Well, it's the same instructions, but there's a dude-friendly resource included too, so you won't die of estrogen poisoning trying to figure out how to do these exercises. 


Anyway, so what kind of moron says women can't do pull-ups and push-ups?

Well, I guess I did--the first time I wrote a post about this back in 2008.

Um, sorry about that.

In my defense, I was really only trying to say that women (or men for that matter) shouldn't have to do full-on "boys" push-ups or unassisted pull-ups in order to feel that they are fit and strong. After all, your ability to lift your own bodyweight depends on how heavy you are! There's no reason for someone on the big side to feel badly because they have more trouble defying gravity than someone who is naturally skinny.

Thing is though, there are a lot of female googlers who come here looking to learn how to build up to their first "boys" push-up or unassisted pull-up. Why should they have to wade through a long whiny post about how mean and unfair these exercises are? We want them to hang out here with us, where it's safe and warm and cozy, and not leave discouraged only to get caught up in some evil acai berry colon cleansing scam elsewhere on the interwebs.  So here is a new improved push up and pull up post: now with 50% more instructions and 90% less whining!

Let's get crackin', shall we?

First off, there's an Obvious Secret to mastering the push up and pull up.

(And yeah, I know an "obvious secret" is an oxymoron, sort of like "painless dentistry" but whatever.) Anyway, here's the secret: You have to build up to them gradually.

Well duh, right? That's what you do with any tough exercise. The problem is, both these exercises require lifting your body weight up off the ground. Just how are you supposed to do that gradually?  Start amputating various limbs and then sew them back on one at a time? That doesn't sound like much fun. The trick is, then, to find easier versions you can handle now and then build up to the "real" exercise.  (And no, sprawling on the couch reaching for a bag of Doritos does NOT count as an easier version!)

How to learn to do your first push up.

1. Step one: wall push-ups. Place your hands on a wall a bit more than shoulder width apart and do push ups from there. Find a height where you can just barely crank out 8-12 in a row. (And as with all varieties of push ups, keep your body straight and stable; don't bend over at the waist and stick your butt out, nor should you let your ass sag against gravity.  Your lower abs should be pulled in.)

(Note: should family members interrupt you as you are doing this, just explain that you thought you'd save money remodeling your house by knocking out a few walls the old fashioned way.)

For a great demonstration of these, MizFit, the most inspiring fitness blogger on the planet, is our go-to gal;



If you can do 3 sets of 12 with no problem, you need to get lower on the wall; if you're as low as you can go without risking a face plant then...

2.  Step two: Table top push ups.  Same as above, but put your hands on a table or counter top, stabilize your body, and do pushups from there.  Probably best not to do this at a fancy restaurant during dinner hour no matter how enthusiastic you're feeling. Once you've getting good at those...

3. You'll want to get lower still.  Do you have a staircase in your house you can do push-ups from? Keep choosing lower and lower stairs to put your hands on until you get to the bottom. Otherwise, have you got any heavy immobile objects in your home of varying heights, like armchairs, couches, teenagers, coffee tables?

4. So what about bent-knee "girls" pushups?  Well sure, throw these in the mix too for variety!  They are also explained in MizFit's video above.  But you'll get more core work (I think!) by doing the full extended version from higher up than doing bent knees off the ground. 

5. By the time you can do a bunch of almost-to-the-ground pushups, you'll be ready for your first "real" pushup. Do one and feel smug. And congratulations, you rock!

6. Do more.  And then some more! And then more after that!

How to learn to do your first pull up.

(Personal Aside: In my experience, these are really f#cking hard to do. However, you will feel so damn bad-ass when you get there, it will be worth all the pain, suffering, frustration, sobbing, exhaustion... wait, where are you all going? When I finally got up to 3 or 4 pull-ups, I managed to work this superhuman feat into every single conversation I had last summer, to the delight of all my friends and relatives, I'm sure. But then sadly, I got sidelined with surgery and a broken arm, so now I'm starting over myself. I stare up at that little steel bar above my head with equal mixture of loathing and yearning, and am working hard toward that joyous day when I will once again be able to claim mastery of the Unassisted Pull Up.  But enough about me...)

1. Step One: As with push-ups, you want to build up your strength with easier versions of the pullup.  You may want to vary your grip to include chin ups too--palms facing inward rather than outward.  Chin-ups are slightly easier that pull-ups, and help give you a cute little bicep bulge.

Also, you want to drop and retract your shoulder blades so that you can show off your boobs you can better engage your back muscles.

Easier pull-up alternatives include:

• A lat pull-down machine at the gym;
• A pull-up bar with a chair under it to put your legs on to support some body weight;
• An exercise band looped around a pullup bar to put your foot in and lighten the load;
• A friend, spouse, personal trainer, indentured servant, minion, or other cooperative mammal with opposable thumbs who can hold your legs and help hoist you up; or
•  One of those gravitron thingies at the gym. (The main option I used the first time; very helpful.) From the name it sounds like it should be able to launch you into outer space, but it's just this contraption that allows you to adjust how much help you need getting up to the top:

(Hey, what the heck, build one of these babies yourself! Couldn't be that hard, could it?)

(Image: Exercise and Leisure)

Step 2:  Negatives.  (These are aptly named, because that's the way you will feel about life while completing them. They are weirdly unsatisfying even as they are kicking your ass.  But they do work well).  To do these, use a chair (or if you're really fit, jump up) to start at the top position of the pull-up.   Lower yourself down slowly.  Start again at the top.  Repeat until exhaustion or suicidal thoughts, which ever comes first.

Step 3: Start "playing" with tiny real pull-ups while building up more fake assisted pull-ups and negatives. You can start at the top and lower yourself an inch or so and then heave (no not the barfy kind of heave, the muscle kind) your body back up. Or you can start at the bottom and inch yourself up as far as you can go and then repeat. Or, if you try that and don't go anywhere at all, you can hang for a while at the top, middle, or bottom, it's all good!

Step 4: At some point, possibly when you least expect it, execute your first pull-up! Personally, I plateaued for ages and ages, needing 30 lbs of assistance as seasons changed and time marched on and I about gave up. I have NO IDEA why all of a sudden one day I was up and over the top!

Advanced Versions of the Push Up and Pull Up

There are lots! But that's the subject of another post. Please check back at Cranky Fitness every two to three minutes for the next year or so to make sure you don't miss it. Or I suppose you could subscribe to the blog by feed reader or email on the left sidebar...

Additional Pull Up and Push Up resources, some with pictures and actual experts:

Experience Life: "Clear the Bar"--instructions on getting to your first pull-up.

Women's Health Magazine: Do 15 "real" pushups

NerdFitness: This one's more a more manly, rugged, dude-friendly guide to doing pull-ups.

Our pal Jody at Truth2Being Fit explains and shows what it means to drop and retract your shoulders.

Anyone trying to master the push up or pull up? Already there? Don't give a crap and just want to say hi or whine about something annoying? It's all good!

Gratuitous Beefcake and Perfect Pull-Up Giveaway

Feeling' a little restless and need to burn off some energy? Wouldn't it be nice to have this waiting for you in your basement? Or, heh-heh-heh, your spare bedroom?

Yeah, okay, we don't actually mean Mr. Meaty here. We mean the Perfect Pull-Up, which actually looks pretty cool.

(Oops, did we just scare off all the straight guys? Sorry! But Cranky Fitness feels a responsibility to fight against the inexcusably tiny Beefcake-to-Cheesecake ratio in modern advertising. We're going to try to tip the scales back to 50-50! Do check back in a few thousand years, will you, and see how that's going?)

And Giveaway Skimmers, yes, it's that time.

You know what to do. Details about the nifty fitness product and the entry instructions are below if you're feeling impatient with my disjointed thoughts about pull ups and home fitness equipment and want to skip down. Don't worry; the regulars and I will join you in the comments section in a few minutes--and we promise not to talk about you while you're gone.

Bye now!

(Ha! Think they bought it? Now... since it's just us again...don't you think that the people who actually read Cranky Fitness posts even when they're boring are way COOLER than the folks who just head straight down for a chance to win the goodies?

Ooops... shh... I think I hear a few of them coming back.... Quick, let's distract them!)




Where were we? Oh yeah...

Pull-Ups!

So I know I've blogged about them before, because there seems to be a big movement to get women doing pull-ups. Which is great, in that pull-ups are one of those good combo moves, where you get to work a bunch of muscles at once. We like that!

We just don't think anyone should feel bad if they can't do unassisted pull-ups. Especially since I can't do them yet either. Doing unassisted pull ups should not be some sort of new Fitness Requirement. But for those who can do them: hooray for you! (I'm getting closer, but so far, still need about 20 lbs of assistance. You can bet if I ever get to the point I can do them without help, I'll be posting my first ever Cranky Fitness video and you're all gonna have to pretend you've watched it).


Got a Home Gym?

Since it turns out I actually didn't have much to say about pull-ups that I haven't already said, let's talk about another giveaway related subject: working out at home.

Alas, I don't have a home gym set-up anymore. We used to have one in California, and I miss it a lot.

You know which was the most useful piece of equipment we had in our gym?

(Ours was not this nice)

Yep, the washer. And the dryer. Because it was the need to visit these machines that reminded us of the treadmill and the weights and stability ball, etc.

Did you know that doing laundry goes particularly well with weight training? Especially if you hate weight training and have to coax yourself in to it. Instead of doing it all at once, you can just do a couple of exercises every time you bring down laundry or fold clothes or whatever. Eventually, both the laundry and your strength training are done!

Your sure can't do that at 24 Hour Fitness.

Of course, even if you don't have weights or a perfect pull-up machine or a treadmill, you can still exercise at home.

And the clever folks at Elastic Waist put up this helpful video to explain just how to do it!




About The Perfect Pull-Up:

So the Perfect Pull-Up comes from the same folks who make the Perfect Pushup. You can find more pictures of Mr. Meaty read more about the product at the Perfect Pullup Page of the Perfect Pushup Website.

But if you don't feel like clicking, here's the PR Pitch from the Perfect PullUp People:

It's "a complete system for working over 600 muscles, now available with an ab strap that provides an additional workout for the body core. Additional innovations include rotating handles that allow consumers to do pullups and chinups together for the first time and two swing arms that can be used in three different positions where consumers of any fitness levels can improve from standing row pullups, to Australian pullups, to normal pullups."

The system retails for $99.95 and includes "one adjustable Pullup bar, two swing arms, two rotating handles, ab straps, and a 21-day workout created by founder and former Navy SEAL Alden Mills." It installs into any standard door frame. It's designed to "take one of the toughest basic exercises, the pullup, and makes it doable for consumers of any fitness level."

Sounds awesome!


How To Win A Perfect Pull Up:

Sorry, U.S. residents only again, dagnab it. (Although international folks can play for a U.S. friend). Note: if we EVER get a product that the PR firms are willing to have shipped internationally, I think I'm going to have an International Only Giveaway, not that it would make up for all of these.

If you'd like to enter, leave a comment saying why you might want a Perfect Pullup. And of course, we appreciate comments of all kinds, whether they be about Pullups or Beefcake or Fridays or whatever. The entries we like best (for completely arbitrary reasons) will be given triple credit and assigned 3 numbers rather than one.

And I don't usually mention this, but in case you were wondering... folks who leave multiple comments are only entered in these things for their first comment, so no need to worry if you see someone coming back to chat. We like that just fine! (However, if anyone is ever caught coming up with multiple identities to try to fool us into thinking you are different people, you will be banned from winning CF giveaways for life. You will also acquire some pretty nasty karma. But we don't tend to attract that sort of person here, thank goodness).

Contest deadline: Tuesday night, Sept 30th; winner announced Wednesday, Oct 1. If you win, please email to claim your prize by Friday Oct 3rd.

Note: Another post is coming up later today--we owe you quiz answers, and I want to post a bit of a Blog Update.

Oh, and for another cool giveaway, be sure to check out what Leslie's got for you over at The Weighting Game!

Pull Ups and Push Ups: For Women Too?

[By Crabby]

(Photo by hrtmnstrfr)

So, you want to learn how to do push ups or pull ups? The 2011 update of this post on  Pull-Up and Push-Ups for Women is a much better resource. Sorry for the extra click--but it's got much more in the way of practical tips and much less in the way of whining!

Or, well, if you're feeling too lazy to relocate, here's the original version:

Who Changed The Rules?

Pull Ups and Push Ups: all of a sudden, it seems, we women are being urged to take 'em on.

If I'm not mistaken, we used to be considered exempt. We had a special easy kind of push-up just for us, the "girls" version, with knees down. And as to pull ups? Most guys can't do 'em either, and they have all that testosterone--only Super Fit Weightlifter Gals were supposed to be able to rise to the challenge. The rest of us could crank out a few lat pulls or hop on the Gravitron and call it a day.

But as women have gotten more empowered and stronger and started to take over the weight rooms and fitness magazines, the "bar," so to speak, has been raised.

Wait, you're still here?  Did you miss the link above?  Seems a shame you're reading this old post (which I'm a bit embarrassed about, honestly) when there's a newer updated post that has all the information in this one, plus more handy tips.  So let's try that again, shall we?  Here's the 2011 Cranky Fitness post on how to do push ups and pull ups.

Or not. Sigh. Whatever....

And so while I'm usually able to ignore Fit Bloggers who do Incredible Things (like Bunny Girl or Nitmos) the call to master these two forms of torture exercises is getting louder every day.

The New York Times was recently pushing push-ups. Geek Girl recently dissected the anatomy of a push up. Even bloggers we love such as MizFit and Stumptuous and Jen at Survival of the Fittest and Kelly at Fitness Fixation (and in the News) seem to be telling us: Push Ups and Pull Ups are great and you gals can all learn to do them too!

Well, my response to these beloved sources of inspiration?

Screw it, No We Can't!

(Disclaimer: actually, I can do 25ish full-body push-ups, if I have to. I actually prefer other machine-based forms of upper body exercise. But I'm a bazillion years from being able to do an unassisted pull-up. So I can totally relate to those who have Push Up issues, and I will count myself as an honorary member of your Tribe).

What's Wrong With Rising Expectations for Women's Fitness?
Nothing! I am generally on the other side of the argument on this stuff, urging women to do their strength training and railing against the use of teeny tiny pink weights.

But Push-Ups and Pull-Ups are Unfair and Mean!
These exercises are Unfair Benchmarks for fitness. The larger your body weight, the harder they are, even if you're really strong. There are some incredibly fit women who do not have lucky lean metabolisms. Should heavy fit people feel like failures because they can't do some arbitrary body-weight lifting exercise?

No!

So don't feel bad if you can't and won't ever to be able to do them. Keep getting stronger and set whatever goals motivate you.

That Said, I Really Really Want to be Able to Do Some Pull-Ups.
These gals are just a little too inspiring to ignore them entirely. I'm lean enough now that theoretically, pull-ups should be a possibility. On the other hand, I honestly think I'm (a) too old and (b) too lazy to do what it would take to get there.

But still, perhaps I'll try a little harder to get a little closer.

Some Resources if you want to Learn To do Push-Ups or Pull-Ups:

As common sense suggests, you need to approach it incrementally, but the gals above have creative ideas as to how to do that. More specifically:

• Jen and the folks at Experience Life have lots of suggestions to get you to your First Pull-up.
• Stumptuous tells you how to Mistress the Push-Up
• MizFit gives Push-Up lessons in a handy video.
• From Jen again, how to Do 15 Pull-Ups . (For you Hard Core Fit gals.)

Crabby Goes to the Gym!
Based on the above resources, it seemed like time for me to try some "negative" pull-ups. These involve starting from the top of a pull-up and lowering yourself down.

I started my pull-up remediation program last week and I learned several things:

1. Negative pull-ups are MUCH easier if you skim the article, ignore the part about "slowly" and just let gravity drop you down, then hop up again and drop down again, etc. in an entirely half-assed manner.

2. Even cheaty half-assed negatives can MAKE YOU SORE AS HELL FOR THREE DAYS AFTERWARDS.

3. If you go back and read the article, then return to the gym and do them right ("a slow three or four count per negative"), you may discover you can hardly do any. Hardly doing any still makes you SORE AS HELL for another couple days.

4. After years of slacky weight training, wherein the goal has been pretty much to maintain strength rather than increase it, feeling SORE AS HELL is actually kinda fun!

(However, check back in a few weeks when I'll probably have stopped doing negatives because they're too hard. Sorry, you weren't, um, coming to Cranky Fitness for inspiration, were you?)

Is anyone else trying to master/increase their push-ups or pull-ups, or do you not give a crap whether you can do them or not?