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Dips and Pullups

MSUMike Posts: 6 Joined: 2008/03/20	2008/03/24, 10:45 PM I have never been blessed in my shoulder, pec strength and have always struggled with both of these, but completly with chinups. I have not worked out moderately in nearly 5 years since graduating high school. After stumbling upon this website, I have committed myself to re-starting as of today. today was day one in the program, and I have been eating better (mainly chicken breast in a salad) the last 3-4 days. My question is for help with alternatives or ideas. The program Im using from the site includes "close grip chins" and I was not able to even one. I didn't have a partner so was unable to do negatives until fatal. So, I moved across to the dip bar and did as many as I could for 3 sets (1 x 7, 1 x 5, 1 x2). The gym even had a neat machine to help with "negative" dips or chinups called a gravitron. doing a military grip style chinup with 100lbs added i struggled to do 5, adding 140 i was still barely able to do 5. That shows how weak my shoulder and upper back is i believe. I just wanted to get some input into alternative exercises for this group of muscles in my program. I understand the pro version of membership allows you to select other exercises but at this time in college i cant afford it. Thanks everyone everything else went great (seated cable rows and calf raises on leg press) with an additional 7:30 of cardio on an elliptical machine burning 100calories thrown in.
koya1893 Posts: 19 Joined: 2008/03/12	2008/04/03, 07:43 AM I share this with everyone that ask me this question: How do you workout your back to do "pull ups"? Like any muscle group you need to prep them for what I call "big day". Big day meaning when you finally try to do the very first pull up. Believe it or not it's the lite weight that sets the pace for this. Bent over row with barbell to obtain the form and recruiting that muscle, which I may add it is one of the hardest muscle to recruit. Then do the one arm dumdbell row, start with lite again untill you get the form down. Seated row and one of my favorate, with this exercise I do my heavy 5 X 5 routine. I take 90 percent of my 1rev weight and do 5 reps and 5 sets. the one thing I do different for all my routine is I do both a push and pull routine. Example: pull ups 8 resp/close grip tricep of 155lbs. I maintain the 8 reps for 6 sets the close grip tricep I increase 20 lbs. to complete 6 sets. the seated row routine I do tricep push down. the one arm dumbbell row I do tricep kick back with. On a heavy day I do dumbbell press with my one arm dumbbell row. Between the one arm dumbbell row and seated cable row should build a good foundation for you to do pull ups. for my cabel pull down I have a modified position for performing the exercise. It goes like this: instead of the regular position where you have the padded round support for your knees. I sit and put my legs over those padded support so when you pull the bar down your core will be engaged and the lats are constantly recruited and forces you to initiate the exercise with the lats instead of the arm pulling the bar down. One thing to note when the cable pull down was designed it was meant to simulate the motion of you pulling yourself up instead of pulling the bad down even though you are in a seated position. I have not included a video of this exercise in my website because all the video I am re-shooting to update my site. shoot me an email here: ben_mendoza@bodydimension.com