Workout (half) week

[lozette]

My schedule is slightly disrupted this week due to going down to see my mum & dad tonight and therefore not being able to make my usual Thursday night training...

MondayGood mornings: 3 x 10 with 20kg bar

Comments

[shermarama]

I'm pretty certain you're not supposed to go to straight arm every time with chin-ups - it's not generally the case with any strength work-out, is it? If you were doing them free you'd usually start from the top of the rep, lowering and then raising, and the machines sort of do that too, where you kneel on it and then it drops. Starting from hanging at the bottom would be a whole different work-out, especially doing it repeatedly. Like starting doing a bench press from having the weight right on your chest every time.

I never quite managed to ever do unassisted chin-ups (including ones with the old-fashioned sort of assistance of someone propping me up under the knees) but I think I got down to about 10kg of help on one of those machines. I could hardly do any at that point, though.

[lozette]

Yeah, I think I'm doing the chip-ups wrong, but never extending your arms fully in any exercise? When I do bicep curls I get told off if I don't extend my arms fully to the bottom.

Not quite sure I understand what you say about benching - do you mean you're *not* meant to press from your chest? You totally are... if you don't hit your chest then that's not a full rep (in competition terms, for definite; and also in training terms).

[shermarama]

*grins* I'm probably being horribly under-informed. And yes, remembering bench-presses wrong. Wrong end of the stroke, anyway, isn't it. I'm struggling to think of analogous things because this one's pulling not pushing - keeping opposing tensions in the system the whole way through the set is what I think I meant by my 'generally' there, though - not that you never straighten out for specific things, but that the very end of a range is often the toughest bit and not what people might be working on.

Going all the way to straight arms every time is going to be distinctly harder, anyway, like with the bicep curls. The problem with watching other people in a gym is how many of them might be doing something, I don't want to say wrong, but less challengingly than they could.

[lozette]

Phew, I was having one of those crises of confidence where you suddenly wonder if EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG!

At my weightlifting gym, the guys do unassisted chinups from fully extended arms; but on the assisted machine at my work gym (there are no machines in my weightlifting gym) the people only do a limited range of movement. I'm wondering just how far down you're meant to go in assisted ones, now. Might be time for you YouTubeing.

Oh well, the fact that I could do 4 (assisted) from right at the bottom with my arms fully extended isn't too bad, then, even *if* it was with 47kg counterweight.