Don't caught up with the excuse of not being able to do chins because your heavier than most people. Lifting your body weight is lifting your body either way.
A person at 10% bf and 11 stone will have a lot less muscle mass than someone at 10% bf at 15 stone, so the extra muscle should be able to deal with the heavier weight.
Do as many as you can and try and improve each workout.
Dutch, this is perhaps the way I am going to go - any increase in cals I hope will be almost unnoticeable - but hopefully enough to give a little help to strength.
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it's what i'm doing at the mo... i'm increasing strength and i'm looking a little buffer but have probably only gained 2lbs in 2 months.
Don't caught up with the excuse of not being able to do chins because your heavier than most people. Lifting your body weight is lifting your body either way.
A person at 10% bf and 11 stone will have a lot less muscle mass than someone at 10% bf at 15 stone, so the extra muscle should be able to deal with the heavier weight.
Do as many as you can and try and improve each workout.
And also don't forget that a pull up is an exercise like any other and the body has to learn the right technique and adapt to the specific demands of that exercise.
There are plenty of 'strong' people who can lift a lot of weight if it's on their back (i.e. they are using legs and back and pushing up) but can't do a pull up. This means that they don't know how to use their upper body to make the pull.
okay, okay everyone. i'll be working on doing the pull-ups and chin ups. It may be a case of just getting used to it as I've always had assistance from weight. Will see how i get on - but for anyone thinking of trying a programme 5x5 seemed ace last night.
Well I have for most of the rest of the routine. I think I'll just try and get some lifts and disregards the seconds for this one. It's probably because I am so used to the assisted and doing it for 5/5 that I have found it difficult (and not being used to it). If i'm unable to do the pull ups I'll hopefully be able to work with the chin ups with the hope of eventually doing both.
Managed to get 3-chin ups for 2 sets and 2 on another. It's not great, but hopefully I will be able to increase next week. I hope that 3 reps is enough for a reaction though!
hey mate... not sure if I read this right; you are doing a 5/5 cadence and 5x5 (sets/reps)!!! If so then no-wonder you fell like you may be overtraining. Either speed up teh reps and stick with 5x5 or stick with 5/5 cadence and cut the total number of sets in half I'd say. 8-12 for HIT is generally a good guidline and somewhere around 20 for faster cadence sets.
Regarding chinups; keep them in mate they are a great exercise. When I first started then I struggled to one! Now I can do about 8 at almost a 5/5 cadence. But for some strange reason my latpulldown weight is about a 1/3 of my bodyweight! I must be v strange!
If you are struggling to do very many what I did is to just aim for an overall number of reps. At 5/5 cadence somewhere around 6-8 reps is a good guidline for bulking, so when I started doing chins I just did as many sets as it took me to get a total of 6 reps (with about 30sec rest in-between sets, or more if you cant get to 6 overall). At first it was taking me 3-mini sets to get 6, now I can them in one set.
Another good option is to do negatives say once a week to build up strengh quickly. But still do standard chins in your other workouts as I found you have to learn the skill not just gain the strengbth from the negatives. With the negatives aim for about 6-10 reps again and a lowering time of 10secs. When you can no longer lower under-control then stop. And if that occurs at 10reps + then add some weight to a dip belt (or similar) next time. When I was doing frequent negatives I found it quite astonishing how quickly strength increases if you are eating enough. And soon I was able to strap a good 20kg round my waist. Then you look awesome! ;-)
