BrianBinVA
Total Posts: 5140
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05-18-22 02:35 PM - Post#919547
Thoughts on the minimum effective dose for GTG, in terms of the number of sets? I'm using it for pullups, and I find if I do too many sets I simply get sore elbows, but don't want to do so little I am not getting anything out of it.
Based on my experiment of one, 3 sets throughout the day is working OK for now, but would love to hear thoughts on this.
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MrDave100
Total Posts: 35
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I've always found success with 4-5 sets a day. But if 3 sets a day is working for you, I think you've answered your question.
Have you tried using rings, that might alleviate the elbow pain?
Someone posted his cure earlier this year on Strongfirst (??) Lay on the floor with your palms facing down and arms at your sides. Roll to each side and slide your arms under each hip, so your hip bone is pushing on the back elbow or a little below. Hold the position for a few minutes. After a few weeks his pain disappeared. I tried it and after 4-5 days I noticed marked improvement but wasn't consistent with it.
Edited by MrDave100 on 05-18-22 03:06 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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BrianBinVA
Total Posts: 5140
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I've always found success with 4-5 sets a day. But if 3 sets a day is working for you, I think you've answered your question.
Have you tried using rings, that might alleviate the elbow pain?
Someone posted his cure earlier this year on Strongfirst (??) Lay on the floor with your palms facing down and arms at your sides. Roll to each side and slide your arms under each hip, so your hip bone is pushing on the back elbow or a little below. Hold the position for a few minutes. After a few weeks his pain disappeared. I tried it and after 4-5 days I noticed marked improvement but wasn't consistent with it.
Should have noted in the original post that I am using rings...
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Matt_T
Total Posts: 379
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05-18-22 03:56 PM - Post#919554
Check out Chin Up God if it's still public on leangains
3 sets a day, starting at half your max, add one rep per day.
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Cearball
Total Posts: 273
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05-18-22 05:44 PM - Post#919555
2 sets 5 days a week work with EES so I think that's a good minimum
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iPood
Total Posts: 2360
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I experienced great success using ratcheted ladders (doing the rungs throughout the day).
Week One: testing the water.
Mon: 1x1,2,3.
Tue: 1x4.
Wed: 1x1,5.
Thu: 1x1,3,5.
Fri: 1x2.
Week Two: feeling strong.
Mon: 1x1,2,3,4,5.
Tue: 1x2,4. .
Wed: 1x3,4,5
Thu: 1x4.
Fri: 1x1,2,3,4.
Week Three: tapering down.
Mon: 1x1.
Tue: 1x2.
Wed: 1x2,3,4,5.
Thu: 1x2.
Fri: 1x1.
Doing anything from 1x[1-5] to a full 1x1,2,3,4,5 should be sustainable for a ridiculously long time: doing a full week of 1x1 is okay, but I wouldn’t do a full dive rung ladder daily too often.
"I think we often spend too much time focusing on max fitness
and not nearly enough on maintaining our minimums.
It seems we need to think sustainable rather than obtainable.
Meaning whatever we do today, we can do it again tomorrow.
Never taking so much from ourselves that we can't."
Dan Martin |
Edited by iPood on 05-19-22 01:13 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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SpiderLegs
Total Posts: 369
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05-19-22 07:27 AM - Post#919568
My best success with GTG was when I was working from home and had bars within a few seconds away from my desk. 2-3 reps and 8-10 sets per day was my sweet spot.
I have super long arms and anything more than 5-6 reps of pull-ups makes my MAPS flare up. But I can do 3 reps of pull-ups all day long. Plus with 2-3 reps, I could focus on good form as well. Once I hit my 5th or so rep, the kipping begins.
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jimi1942
Total Posts: 26
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05-19-22 08:14 AM - Post#919570
About twenty years ago, I was doing a version of greasing the groove (GTG) from Pavel of multiple sets of five reps throughout the day for chinups, supinated grip, palms facing. I never got more than eight or nine as a maximum. One day I think I did about 45 total. My elbows hurt. I was in my early 50s. I stopped that version.
I read a number of articles about increasing chinups, pullups, and other bodyweight exercises like pushups. There was a version of GTG that worked much better for me. Test your one rep max. Wait a day or two and then do one set of two thirds to three quarters of your one rep max. Repeat for five days. Wait a day or two and retest. I don't remember what my max was maybe 10, but discovered I could keep adding singles if I waited probably 20 or 30 seconds. I think I got up to 42 chinups that way. I never timed the session. I got delayed onset muscles soreness of probably a few days.
It’s a long story I wrote about that I won’t subject you to as why I was willing to put myself through that. Fast forward 15 years, and I found a better version of GTG for myself. Test the one rep max. Do three quarters of that for three or four days (not necessarily consecutive days) and then retest. When that stops working, I do one rep short of my max for three to five days and retest. I got up to 13 chin ups and then transitioned to pullups (pronated grip - palms facing away) and did 12 yesterday. I had started from zero because I got sick and couldn’t train for 18 months. At one point, I went from four chinups to seven in a week doing GTG and a lot of hangs from my doorway pullup bar which I still do.
Here’s Stuart McGill working with Brian Caroll, a top powerlifter, who had terribly injured himself to improve pullups. I haven’t tried it but might.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdveLFrh9U8&a mp;ab_channel=BrianCarrol l1306
McGill and Caroll wrote a book together called Gift of Injury, which I haven’t read.
https://www.amazon.com/Injury-Stuart-McGill- Brian-Carroll/dp/09735018 63/ref=sr_1_1?crid=E4M9Y8 A327QK...
I’m grateful I didn’t know about weight lifting when I was a lot younger. I would have probably wrecked myself. I lettered on the high school tennis team when all the good athletes played football, basketball and baseball. None of the pros including Jim Brown, the great fullback, who I was fortunate to see live, lifted weights. They all did calisthenics.
I was doing a lot of jogging in the mid 1970’s and reading Runner’s World Magazine. The magazine published a booklet about yoga and weight training for runners. I bought a barbell set and got injured after a few sessions and didn’t do it again for 30 years and got into scaled crossfit workouts for a few months and quit before I could get injured to do Rippetoe’s Starting Strength. I couldn’t handle it emotionally at a certain point and went to Wendler’s 531 and made decent progress. A lot of things happened that I couldn’t continue.
These days I’m doing Dan’s five categories of loaded carries, squats, hip hinges, pulls and pushes. I no longer am concerned about reaching numbers on weighted lifts. I don’t have the body type for it. The few people I have read about who are serious lifters my age and my height outweigh me by at least 70 pounds. They are suffering from it with all kinds of joint problems.
I ride a carveboard (I'm actually relearning how to do it)
https://www.facebook.com/Carveboard-USA-169408 206521198/
I have two of them. No, I can’t do what you see in the photo. I only started skateboarding in my mid 20s, almost broke my hand in a bad fall, quit, and resumed 20 years ago. A carveboard mimics snowboard and surf heel and toe turns. It has a lot of side flexion and is a lot harder to control than the skateboards I used to ride but is a lot more fun.
I had meniscus surgery five years ago and returned to carveboarding after five weeks and surfing the following week. Maybe I would have had it anyway but doing pistols and other exercises with an internally rotated knee (I didn't know that) didn't help.
Like Dan says, I know I have another injury, but do I have another recovery. It would be the height of stupidity for me to get injured lifting weights. Seven years ago, I was doing loaded carries of about a minute with more than my bodyweight with dumbbells and weights stuffed into my jacket pockets. On some days, walking out into the surf with my board ten yards, before paddling is much much harder. You wouldn’t believe it until you try it. I also do a lot of what people call mobility work. I’m a practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method for over 30 years which has helped enormously.
I have done some of Joel Jamieson’s protocols for conditioning and still do to some extent (his work has changed enormously since he wrote the Ultimate MMA Conditioning book,) but after watching Mick Jagger (I heard the Stones live in Hyde Park London in 1969, 20 feet from the stage with another four hundred thousand crazies) I realized I should let myself do whatever movements I want for conditioning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxqpYIbmvP4&a mp;ab_channel=ABCNews
I learned from Dan that the goal is to keep the goal the goal. I have enough strength to carveboard and jump to my feet in a surf stance. I don’t need any more than that. I’m also practicing krav maga after a break of four and a half years. I never looked for trouble and haven’t had a fight since childhood, but self-defense is a good thing to know.
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Jordan Derksen
Total Posts: 392
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05-19-22 09:55 AM - Post#919574
I'm currently running a bodyweight exercise GTG experiment.
5 days a week I do 5 rounds of 15 squats, 10 pushups, 5 pullups spread throughout the day. This is my 4th week. Previous weeks the reps were lower as I built up slowly over the last month.
This week I'm hitting an exhaustion wall. Up until now it's been great. The last few nights I had trouble sleeping which is usually my first sign to dial things back in the gym.
I'm debating cutting down to either 3 days a week of this or cutting down overall volume and maintaining the frequency.
Number of sets really depends on how intense your sets are. My understanding is GTG should be very sub max. Less than half your max ideally. Then the sets get dialed up a lot. If you're doing 3 sets of 10 that will feel really different than 10 sets of 3. However I'm curious if long term the 10x3 would sneak up on you just the same since it's the same overall volume.
But minimum effective dose could be as low as 2-3 sets. I would see that as more maintenance levels though.
But pullups are hard. They fit in nicely with easy strength, so I would think as few as 2x5 done daily can be really effective with pullups.
Maybe I should take my own advice. Here I am doing 25 every day.
No elbow pain thankfully, but wow am I tired.
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Matt_T
Total Posts: 379
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05-19-22 11:04 AM - Post#919580
I'm currently running a bodyweight exercise GTG experiment.
5 days a week I do 5 rounds of 15 squats, 10 pushups, 5 pullups spread throughout the day. This is my 4th week. Previous weeks the reps were lower as I built up slowly over the last month.
This week I'm hitting an exhaustion wall. Up until now it's been great. The last few nights I had trouble sleeping which is usually my first sign to dial things back in the gym.
I'm debating cutting down to either 3 days a week of this or cutting down overall volume and maintaining the frequency.
Number of sets really depends on how intense your sets are. My understanding is GTG should be very sub max. Less than half your max ideally. Then the sets get dialed up a lot. If you're doing 3 sets of 10 that will feel really different than 10 sets of 3. However I'm curious if long term the 10x3 would sneak up on you just the same since it's the same overall volume.
But minimum effective dose could be as low as 2-3 sets. I would see that as more maintenance levels though.
But pullups are hard. They fit in nicely with easy strength, so I would think as few as 2x5 done daily can be really effective with pullups.
Maybe I should take my own advice. Here I am doing 25 every day.
No elbow pain thankfully, but wow am I tired.
Yeah, your bodyweight and how much of it you are moving are big variables
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Jordan D
Total Posts: 771
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05-19-22 12:53 PM - Post#919584
2 sets 5 days a week work with EES so I think that's a good minimum
I second this.
This will get anyone to a +100lb chinup, and 10-15 bw reps, if they just stay the course and don't think too much.
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Justin Jordan
Total Posts: 854
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BrianBinVA
Total Posts: 5140
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05-19-22 02:39 PM - Post#919588
...and aren't fat.
Ha, well, yes, that part's covered off fine.
Since I only weigh between 155 and 160, I'm skeptical that two sets of five will get me to a +100 rep, but I love any answer that has me doing only two sets.
Mostly I just wanted to crowdsource some knowledge to see if every single person was like, no, dude, less than 10 sets won't get you jack squat or something...
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Jordan D
Total Posts: 771
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05-19-22 05:32 PM - Post#919592
Since I only weigh between 155 and 160, I'm skeptical that two sets of five will get me to a +100 rep, but I love any answer that has me doing only two sets.
The only way I can imagine it not working is if you don’t treat the reps like practice, with an idea in mind of perfect form.
For me that’s either:
1) Slow and controlled with shoulders fully retracted at the top, ultimately aiming for chest-to-bar, or…
2) Fast and snappy speed reps with shoulders fully retracted at the top, and chest slamming into the bar.
The latter, I think, are what translates best to heavy weighted pulls, but shouldn’t be practiced without a steady diet of the first, which are prophylactic against achy elbows.
Also, each rep should end with elbows fully extended, and paused, with the shoulders either packed or unpacked (dead hang) depending on the state of your rotator cuffs.
Practice, practice. It’s magic, I tell ya.
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BrianBinVA
Total Posts: 5140
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05-20-22 09:36 AM - Post#919601
Since I only weigh between 155 and 160, I'm skeptical that two sets of five will get me to a +100 rep, but I love any answer that has me doing only two sets.
The only way I can imagine it not working is if you don’t treat the reps like practice, with an idea in mind of perfect form.
For me that’s either:
1) Slow and controlled with shoulders fully retracted at the top, ultimately aiming for chest-to-bar, or…
2) Fast and snappy speed reps with shoulders fully retracted at the top, and chest slamming into the bar.
The latter, I think, are what translates best to heavy weighted pulls, but shouldn’t be practiced without a steady diet of the first, which are prophylactic against achy elbows.
Also, each rep should end with elbows fully extended, and paused, with the shoulders either packed or unpacked (dead hang) depending on the state of your rotator cuffs.
Practice, practice. It’s magic, I tell ya.
I've got no shoulder issues at all; the only thing that ever bothers me with pullups is elbows, but I'm more than happy to give 2 x 5 a shot -- I'd REALLY love if the answer is only two sets. As I said, I was more concerned that the answer would be more along the lines of "you gotta do 10-12 or don't bother"
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Jordan D
Total Posts: 771
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05-20-22 12:40 PM - Post#919604
I've got no shoulder issues at all; the only thing that ever bothers me with pullups is elbows, but I'm more than happy to give 2 x 5 a shot -- I'd REALLY love if the answer is only two sets. As I said, I was more concerned that the answer would be more along the lines of "you gotta do 10-12 or don't bother"
Well, YMMV of course, but I can assure you: only 2 sets worked beautifully for me.
5-10 set GTG might work a lot faster, but elbows are probably the trade off. That’s no longer a trade off I’m willing to make.
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