Grease the Groove-Pull up Question

[ndz24]

I am going to start with the grease the groove pull up training system because I have finally worked my way up from doing 0 pull ups to being able to do 3 pull ups unassisted! I was reading of the program and I am wondering about the training set. I do not understand what it means and how to determine a training set. The sentences in the workout read this:

"Training Sets are easy to define, but require some experimentation to determine for the individual participating in the program. A training set a specified number of repetitions. That means one individual may have 3 repetitions in his training set, but another individual may have more or less. The key to determine the proper number of repetitions in a training set comes on Day 3. You must perform nine training sets that day. If you only do twelve repetitions in your best single set (a PFT set or a maximum effort set), then your training set would probably have one or at most two repetitions."

I dont really understand what is meant. SO for me I can do 3 unassisted pull-ups. So would my training sets be 3 pull ups? OR would they be 1 or 2 because I need to do many sets?

Thanks for the help ladies~!!!!

[KyleAaron]

Well done on getting to 3 pullups. A lot of the women I work with have doing just one as a goal, and are very happy when they achieve it.

That text is indeed very muddled, I have no idea what they mean. Here is what I suggest:

Just do lots of pullups.

If you can do 3 now, during your next workout, do 10. Whether it's 3,3,3,1, or 4,3,2,1, or 1,1,1, etc doesn't matter. Whether you do them together or in between other exercises doesn't matter. Just get 10 pullups total.

In your next workout, get 12 total. After that, 14. And so on.

After 20 workouts - 6-10 weeks, depending on how often you work out - when you can do 50 pullups total, you'll find you can do 8+ in one go. At this stage you'll start adding weight, hold a 10lb dumbell between your feet or have a little backpack with weight in it. Just 10lbs makes a difference, believe me.

The same approach applies with every kind of bodyweight work, squats, inverted rows, knee pushups and pushups, etc. Just get the total up, this will get up the numbers you can do in one go, and improve your strength and endurance.

[viridian]

Yep! What he said.

It sounds like they might be telling you to do nine warm up sets... but they refer to everything as 'training sets' so that doesnt make much sense. If that is what they mean - Ive never heard of anyone doing 9 warm up sets unless they were only going to do one work set at the very end. Which is still a bit overkill for most people.

I've also found using the Smith Machine for a pull up warm up works REALLY well. You dont burn yourself out trying to go straight into pull ups that way.

Sit on the ground underneath the SM bar with it set just so you can grab it with your arms fully extended. Position your legs in front of you to your liking (bent knees with your heels on the ground is easier than straight legs with heels on the ground). You'll have to play around a bit to find out what feels right. Just make sure to really squeeze your shoulders at the top of the rep.
I do 5ish reps in 2-3 sets like this before I move on to work sets of pull ups