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You can almost complete the Iron Maiden or Beast Tamer pullup…
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| You have been training hard to join the exclusive ranks of Iron Maidens and Beast Tamers. You need to complete a strict tactical pullup, the neck or the upper chest touching bar, with a 24kg kettlebell if you are a lady or 48kg if you are a gent.
You can confidently do it with 20(40)kg any time. But with the target weight you cannot quite touch the bar. What is your next step?
A classic approach of a patient strength athlete is building up the volume with sets of five and fewer reps with a moderately heavy weight, in your case, 16(32)kg. Which is exactly what you have done to get as far as you have. But now you need another tactic. It is known to rock climbers as “lock-offs.”
Using a lighter kettlebell, perhaps 10(20)kg, pull to the top and stay there for up to 10 seconds. Do not just hold but attempt to pull the bar through your upper chest, to leave a red welt from the bar on your skin. At StrongFirst Bodyweight Instructor Certification (SFB), we call this type of effort an “active static.”
Come down before your neck or chest leaves the bar—this is not an endurance exercise—and make it a regular negative, not an exaggeratedly slow one.
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| | An important detail: do lock-offs with a grip wider than your strongest grip. Do this to reduce the strain on the elbows by preventing their hyperflexion. In addition, “clear” the elbows afterwards by holding a handstand by a wall or doing another counter-stretch.
Perform three to five sets of lock-off singles a couple of times a week while reducing your normal pullup training volume by a half. Do this for no longer than six weeks: strength gains from isometrics are fast and furious but then they abruptly hit the wall.
Having exhausted the quick gains, switch to Plan Strong™ programming to advance to new heights.
Please note that to qualify for a Plan Strong™ Custom Training Plan for weighted pullups, you need to be able to do strict pullups with more than 1/3 of your bodyweight added.
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