Hi Friend!
You know how when you want to do something you've never done before and you're excited about it, you find creative ways to get it done?
Well, one year I wanted to get really good at pull ups and I fixated in my mind that I wanted to do 20 straight. I had never done that many, with 10 or 11 being my max at the time, I wondered how best I could do it. Living and working in the home of, arguably, the worlds best marathon, I thought if all these thousands and thousands of runners each year who had never run races before could suddenly run 26.2 miles, then surely there's something to learn from their training and that's how I figured out how to do 20 pull ups.
Volume You can't go from couch to 26.2 miles without building up your running mileage each week so if I or you wanted to go from 0 to 20 or 10 to 20 pull ups, the same thought process can be applied. Each week and each workout, you have to build up your total volume of reps completed. Once you reach a certain number, you can test and see how many you can do or in the case of running how many miles you can run.
E.g. Pull Ups If I could do 1 set of 10 pull ups. How many reps could I get if I did 2 sets total, or 3 sets or 4, 5, 6, ... sets. A lot more.
Workout 1: Maybe that first day, I test how many pull ups I could get in 4 sets. Let's say I did 11, 7, 5, 4 for a total of 27.
Workout 2: Next workout I could aim for 4 sets x 8 reps for 32 total reps.
Workout 3: Then 5x7 = 35 total reps.
Workout 4: 4x9=36 total reps.
Workout 5: (2x11) + (4x5) = 42 total reps.
Workout 6: 5x9=45 total reps.
Workout 7: 4x12=48 total reps.
Workout 8: 5x10=50 total reps.
Workout 9: 4x13=52 total reps.
Workout 10: 6x9=54 total reps.
Workout 11: 4x15=60 total reps.
Workout 12: (1x18) + (3x7) =39 total reps.
Workout 13: Test!
If you did pull ups 1x/wk, then it would take you 13 weeks. If you did pull ups 1.5x/wk (alt weeks of 1 day and 2 days of pull ups), it'd take 9 weeks. If you did pull ups 2x/wk, then it'd take you 7 weeks. If you did pull ups 3x/wk, then it'd take you 5 weeks. All assuming you started with a base of 10 pull ups.
The same thought process holds true for running miles, doing push ups and probably a whole spectrum of things you want to be better at in your life, whether physical or other.
Each week and/or each workout, increase the total volume of work you do. Have some weeks the sets be fewer and the reps higher. And some weeks the sets many and the reps fewer. Give yourself 1 or 2 weeks at a reduced volume so you can recover and accumulate energy. Then test.
Guess what happens, when you follow this thought process with strength training?
Volume = Muscle You can build muscle. You can get stronger. You can have better muscle definition. You can fit your clothes better. You can feel better. You can feel proud of what you accomplished. You can apply what you learned from the goal setting, the process and the testing and the achievement to future situations. Then you can do it again.
If you want to build muscle, get better at a specific exercise or have a custom program to work on what's important to you, I'd love to help. Reply and let me know and let's get started.
Working on my push ups,
Coach Mike
p.s. if I can help you reply now and let me know.
p.p.s. if you prefer to talk first, you can schedule a call here.
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