Wed, Apr 30th

Workout of the Day

“Helen”
3 Rounds for time:
Run 400 meters
1 1/2 pood Kettlebell X 21 swings (or 25Kg dumbbell swing)
12 Pull-ups

Post time to comments.

“Too Easy”

Basic Kettlebell Swing, Part I, Jefff Martone…[wmv][mov]

Jon Gilson on Personal Responsibility and CrossFit – AgainFaster.com

Latest breakthroughs in exercise equipment

Today’s post was brought to by the letter “W”

15 thoughts on “Wed, Apr 30th”

this might be stoopid question, but is there any way to improve pull-up times? Other than doing more of them.

I’ve been thinking about my wod from monday and the front squats were not a problem, i’d guess 7mins of my total time was spent on them. The remaining time was spent on pull-ups, breaking them into sub-sets of three and changing grips with each set.

Kipping improves the cycle time on pull ups, but if you’re lacking the muscular endurance, I’d advise increasing pull up strength by doing weighted pull ups a few times a week.

Gant Gimes Tabata experiment shot up his pull up numbers as well, so that might also be worth considering.

Anyone else got ideas?

yeah, just having a read of it now (oh the joys of studying for your finals!!). I think ill start that myself.

I’m also going to do fran at the end of each month to measure my progression. She was my first WOD and i love her.

also thank you. I was in the gym on monday doing OHS to warm up and some guy asked me where i had learned about them, i said crossfit and that’s how i met bobby.

Fran was my first CF workout too. Took me about 38 minutes back then

There’s no secret to pullups, just do loads of the things as often as possible. Add a few sets of them into your warmup for every non pullup-centric workout.

Any time you walk past something that looks like it might support your weight, do a few pullups on it.

Cycle between using the pullup grip, chinup grip and alternate grip. Get yourself some chalk if your grip is suffering. Do some towel pullups, ring pullups, tree pullups…constantly varied is the theme I’m going for here.

Oh, and I’m talking about kipping pullups. If you haven’t done so already, perfect your kipping form. There’s a big carryover from kipping competence to strict and weighted competence, so don’t let anyone tell you you’re cheating (not looking at anyone in particular around here…).

With regards to chin ups.. I agree they should be done virtually every free minute…. I work in the building game. Every spare second I get I do several sets from scaffolding:):) Make sure the boss is away of course.. Its one of very few exercises where you do seem to benefit greatly by doing them as often as possible.

Use it or lose it is very much applicable to pull ups!!

If you can do sets of 8 easy STOP!!!!! Get a dipping belt and strap enough weight to you where you cannot manage anymore than 5 reps per set this will build pure pulling power mix that up with high rep pull ups to get your muscular endurance up aswell..

I am currently doing close grip chins, sets of 5 reps with a 45kgs dumbbell strapped to me..

Haha, I love that bender ball. Who knew it was exactly 408% better than crunches. 408% of bugger all is still bugger all. Foolish earthlings.

The fitness industry is a horrible thing. No hard work necessary, just buy this magic piece of crap/pill/dvd and you’ll have a six pack.

It’s enough to turn you to thrusters…

but if its on the internet it must be true!!

You down with OPT? Yeah, you know me…

http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_SCL1OPTHelen.wmv

Colm–it just so happened that I was killing time on the Performance menu site today and there was a thread on increasing pullups. There area a couple of interesting programs listed there although I’ve never tried any of them. http://www.performancemenu.com/forum/showthread.php?t=728

If I remember right, Dragon Door has a lot of pullup related articles that might be worth a read as well. Ultimately I agree with everyone above, volume and consistency are the key but sometimes I like toying with progressions–it makes you feel like you’re accomplishing something.