Mexico bound suzzer should be practicing pullouts not pullups
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Are you doing negative pull ups? I had much more success with that than band assisted pukl ups.
Grunching a bit, I picked up an Ergatta upgrade for my WaterRower in August and will do my 100th workout on it tomorrow. Looking through Strava I have to go back 6 years to find a period where I’ve come close to 100 workouts in 4 months, there are entire years where I didn’t. It’s expensive and will take months to get to you but if you’re looking for machine guided workouts that you’ll pay a monthly fee for forever I find it really engaging.
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Still plugging along with my 3x a week dumbbell workouts and still getting stronger. Yesterday moved up from 40lb to 50lb dumbbells for overhead press (3x8) and did 3x12 rows with 60lb. Dropped a few pounds by eating right in Nov. and am at 305. Dumbbell workouts last 90 mins. I used to rest less so they were faster, but I was using lighter weights.
Haven’t been using my oculus VR much but am hoping to change that. Am thinking i need 30 mins of cardio on off days. Am now strong enough that i think I’ll drop weight reasonably quickly with cardio on current diet when i start doing it more consistently. Just ordered a used textbook on exercise physiology. (I’ve already read a decent amount but wouldn’t mind getting more into it.)
Not really my goal to get more than decently strong. If there were no covid I’d like to be doing 5x/wk HIIT classes and maybe 1x dumbbells.
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I’m working on a method to decrease max pull-ups. Gone from 12 to 6 so far. Seems sure-fire. Possibly injury and/or grip related.
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I’m not sure how old you are, but I’m 40 and I’ve been working on this literally my whole life. I’m finally at zero. Ymmv.
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I’m way older. Your method is clearly superior.
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I must be a natural, I’ve done zero pull ups my whole life.
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Still doing bodyweight stuff with occasional backpack holding 32lbs in a collection of tiny dumbbells.
Upper body
Lots of pushups. For variety I’ve been doing a bunch of handstand push ups. I change those up with varied rates of descent or doing them on closed fists instead of palms.
I’m working on doing a single rep from an elbow-to-torso mount so that I can eventually do these anywhere without a wall, but the strength and coordination for this is going to take some time.
I also added flat push ups with the backpack on where I descend primarily on a single side for consecutive reps. I’m hoping this will help develop what I need to eventually complete a full range-of-motion rep for a one-armed pushup.
Lower body
Leaping split squats wearing backpack
Pistol squats holding 10lb dumbbells elevated each rep
Jog a few miles
Pull ups on tree branches when I run by one appropriate.
Suitcase crunches here and there but I honestly forget to do them.
No idea what I would put out if I stepped into a gym again, but my middle-aged abs are poppin’ so merry xmas to me.
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The other thing is I have to really baby my elbows with any kind of pulling movement. I’ve have problems in both that got so bad I couldn’t do any upper body. So I’m trying to slowly strengthen everything around them w/o yanking too hard. Also I’ve been doing wrist curls and hand squeezes - but I’m worried those are exacerbating my carpal-tunnel-like symptoms.
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I have similar issues with my right elbow especially. I had to cut out pull ups for a couple months recently just to recuperate. And if I’m playing softball, I can only make one hard throw, and then I have to switch from CF to 1B, which sucks because I’m like Willie Mays Hays in center.
Careful with wrist curls, my default is to avoid them. Too much downside, not enough upside, imo.
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What kind of elbow pain? Like where your biceps connects or somewhere else?
My ex-trainer said they would help increase forearm strength which would help with the elbow. Which it seems like maybe it has. But if it’s contributing to my hand problems that would suck. I haven’t done any for a month.
Pretty sure it’s tennis elbow (outside) on left, golfer’s elbow (inside) on right. Anything where I try to yank too much weight can cause either.
But I’ve been being very careful and so far no problems except maybe a little twinge here and there which I can manage. I’m definitely learning to have better form because of this.
The pain comes when say I let the bench press (barbell or dumbells) flop down instead of keeping it controlled and tight the whole way. Or doing one-armed kneeling rows - if I let my arm completely straighten to catch the weight instead of stopping it before the arm can fully straighten.
Your ex-trainer is correct that it could help. A common issue that I’ve seen with people doing wrist curls is that they can carryover the mindset that they have when they are doing bigger movements–trying to increase the load they are using week/week or month/month and also using too much weight in general.
Yeah, letting your arm kind of snap out to full extension on a one-armed row isn’t ideal. Using a 2-3 count tempo on the negative part of the move and then 1-2 count tempo on the way up should help you control the weight better, and limit stress on your joints.
Your muscles don’t remember how many reps you did or how fast you did them. Your muscles react to how well you’ve activated them. People can get fixated on I did 8 reps last time, I’m gonna do 10 reps this time, and then more the next, etc. While it is true that as you gain strength, you’ll be able to do more reps, your muscles don’t know math. So, perfect form and controlled tempo will get you better results, with a lower chance of injury. Tracking past performance is important to gauge progress, but it can lead us to do things like cheat on form which is counter productive. We all succumb to this at various times. I’ve prioritized my ego feeling good by being able to write a higher rep number down on my notepad, but it sacrificed my form, and didn’t actually make me stronger or fitter.
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Thanks, yeah I try not to do any pulling motion I can’t do at least 10 reps of - and I usually still have some left in the tank. I save all my heavy stuff for pushing. Cleans was another one that caused the left tennis elbow. I don’t mess with those anymore.
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TBF, your ex-trainer is an idiot. I understand the appeal of wrist curls, but those muscles get more than they need from other lifts, like deadlift and curls, where they factor in.
I’m only like 80% on the Starting Strength bandwagon after reading other things, but they basically regard “accessory lifts”, even things like curls, as optional and unimportant. (Main lifts are squat, deadlift, bench, overhead press, and (to a lesser extent) rows/pullups). The main lifts hit basically every muscle, especially large muscle groups.
They have a lot of content on their youtube channel, including lifting with various injuries. May have advice for elbows. Mark Rippetoe, their founder, is a bit of a idiot conservative from TX, but more in the idiot engineer conservative vein than straight up meathead or fundie (ie, he’s the sort of conservative who is still capable of contributing useful knowledge).
Any good ideas for elbow tendonitis? Ive been dialling back everything, still having issues.
What I previously called tennis elbow is tricep tendonitis I’m pretty sure. The pain is directly in the middle of my elbow on the back side. Pullups, golf swing, etc. aggravate it.
I’m no expert, but here’s an article. https://startingstrength.com/training/elbow-tendonitis-how-it-occurs-and-what-to-do-about-it
Couple of their Toobs on elbow issues.
