I’m thinking of following the CW Perfect Ten program, using pull-ups. I’m just finishing a week or so away from Pull-ups as part of a planned rest (have still been working out - just no pull-ups), but prior to that, I was doing heavily weighted (for me) pullups 45-65LB extra weight, very low reps. The perfect ten program tends to involve higher reps-sets - probably representing a nice change from my heavy-weight Pull-ups, so that’s as good a reason as any to try it.
But I have a couple of questions:
Firstly, has anyone tried this program, and if so, can you share your experience please? Ideally, I’d like to learn of someone trying Pull-ups, but frankly, I’ll be pleased to hear from anyone who’s tried it.
Secondly, I note that, for some of the workouts, Chad prescribes high-rep sets. Like many, I can’t do high-rep sets with pull-ups without counterweight assistance (which I don’t want to do). Last time I checked, my max reps was 14 (to burnout). It will probably be less now, being as I’ve trained heavy, and obviously burnout is not an option for this program.
How should I address that issue? As I see it, my options are:
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Don’t try Perfect Ten using pull-ups.
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Do multiple sets until I make the prescribed # reps for a particular workout. E.g. where Chad prescribes 2 sets of 25 (let alone the one set of 50!), I could break that up into, say 2 x (3 x 8), with relatively short rests between each 8-rep set, and a longer rest between the next series of 3 sets. (Similarly, I could aim for 10 x 5 for the 50-rep workout, for example). All these would be bodyweight only.
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Stick to the number of sets, letting the reps be what they will be at near fatigue levels (this will thus restrict my max # reps to around 10-12, I suspect).
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Use a counterweight and make the full number of reps. This may be impracticle for me, as I don’t have access to an assist machine, and my homemade attempts at this have been “less than successful” to date, but maybe I should persist?
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Use a Lat-tower (which I think is a poor substitute) for the high-rep sets?
Any suggestions?
WiZlon