Strength Basics

Getting stronger, fitter, and healthier by sticking to the basics. It's not rocket science, it's doing the simple stuff the right way. Strength-Basics updates every Monday, plus extra posts during the week.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Pushups and Pullups, oh my

T-Muscle just published a nice little article by Chad Waterbury. It is called Big Back, Big Chest, Real Fast and it's basically a high-volume bodyweight routine.

Six days a week, for three weeks, 50 pullups and 100 pushups a day - however you want to do them (all in a row, sets of 10, sets of 5, whatever). You do that for three weeks and then take some time off.

It looks a pretty direct method for increasing strength-endurance and (according to Chad Waterbury) muscle size as well. 50 pullups a day is a lot, so is 100 pushups, even split up. The only thing it lacks is any lower-body workout at all. I'm not sure why it isn't even addressed, but there you go. You could add bodyweight squats to the routine - my head says 150+, because they get easy to crank out pretty fast - or just ignore your legs for three weeks while you do this.

It's hardly the first routine like this - it's a lot like doing Simplefit or Crossfit's Cindy for 10 rounds a day (one round, 5 pullups, 10 pushups, 15 squats). It certainly will have an effect - 3 weeks of this is 1800 pushups and 900 pullups. That's about 900 pullups more than most people, and 800+ more than me and I love pullups...

1 comment:

  1. going to hawaii in exactly 3 weeks... going to try the same thing, searched the web to see if any one has done it as well. i have a decent base, but i'm all shrivelled up since i haven't lift in about 3 damn months...

    getting a degree in chemical engineering has really SUCKED my time away... fml

    ReplyDelete

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