How does one perform a pull-through by the way?? Sorry for the idiotic question…
Tony G:
Check out this post on pull throughs:
karma, I personally believe that any of the Olympic exercises, the supplementary Oly lifts, as well as the supplementary lifts for power lifting are the best thing anyone can do. Power cleans (from hang, floor or blocks), power snatches, power pulls, high pulls, low pulls, pull throughs, deadlifts, push presses, clean and jerks, glute ham raises, snatch grip deads, partial deads, good mornings, reverse hypers, pull ups, chins, dips, front and back squats, overhead squats, bent presses, farmers walk, barbell hack squats, see saw presses etc all with dumbells, barbells, kettleballs, with all the variations that you can think of.
My goodness, there’s no reason to ever do an isolation exercise again. If you just try some of these you will see what I mean. Not only are they all fun, but they are challenging to learn and thus promote focus, determination, strategy etc and you will get strong, flexible and even pack on muscle, much more than you ever will by doing curls, kickbacks and hammer strength machine presses. Show me someone who knows how to do a full squat power clean then jerk the weight over their head and that person is not only strong, but is functionally strong, likely has healthy joints, ligaments and bones and is having a helluva lot more fun than the person doing 3 sets of 15 next to them.
How do you feel now after a few weeks of pull throughs? Like you said, your butt is showing you’re making progress. I’ll bet your hams are nice and your lower back is stronger than ever. All this from an exercise that almost nobody does in your gym.
Oops, sorry this is the link:
CGB: I hear ya loud and clear on the compound vs. isolation thing. I’d love to learn the Oly stuff but as I have no coach/partner/spot and I’m about as uncoordinated as humanly possible, I’m extremely hesitant to try that stuff on my own. I do free weights solely, only machine I use is the assisted chin/dip thing since I’m still working on improving my shoulder.
Several sessions with the pull throughs just made me realize all the more that I want to incorporate some different things. They hit the posterior chain differently than the full squats and RDLs I had been doing. Felt damn good actually. That’s why yesterday I changed up my normal pull up segment to the chin/pull up progression from Poliquin’s “Extended Set Gymnast’s Back Routine” . Can I say dayum?! It was sawweeeet. Hell, my back’s never felt anything quite like that and it didn’t kill my shoulder. I did find that my grip strength was completely dead after that so I had to drop the overhand seated row I’d planned on replacing my regular row with.
Anyway, back to pull throughs. Lower body size and strength has always been a given for me. Example: I train calves in the stereotypical 3x15 - 2 or 3 times a year - and they look a lot like Cass’s, cows indeed. Hell, they’re bigger and more defined than most guy’s arms at my gym. It’s burning the fat off the hams and ass that’s the issue, but I’m working on that. Monday was the last time I did the pull throughs and yep, I got comments galore.
“What tha heell is that?”
“What’s that supposed to do?”
“At least it looks like a good stretch.”
Funny how people don’t actually speak to me, but talk around me as if I’m not there. Asses. One of the trainers was around and said something to them to the effect of “That’s pretty dangerous actually…she’d be better off using our thigh adductor machine.”
Gotta love trainers.
Speaking of front and back squats, here’s a combo I have been doing for about the past 6 weeks. I do them on quad day (I do hamstrings on a different day).
I pick a weight that I will fail at front squat at about 6-8 reps; immediately after this, I crank out 6-8 back squats (to failure); finally, I grab a couple dumbells and grind (squats) for 10 slow reps. Three of these supersets and you are TOAST, guaranteed!!