Capsule
Level 3 Valued Member
I (19 year old male, 210lbs) struggle to maintain 20 pull-ups in a single set unless I’m constantly training the movement. I’m regularly tested for pull-ups and 20 is the max score for my age. Even if I take a week or so off I tend to lose reps and can only do 17 to 18. The most I’ve ever done in a set was 22 reps, but I’d like to do 30 one day.
I typically do a pull-up or chin-up pyramid starting with a set of 1 rep , then 2 reps, building up to a set of 10 clean reps and then back down to a set of 1 rep. With 90 seconds of rest in between and 100 total clean reps in the workout. I’ll do this workout about 3 times a week and sometimes superset it with weighted dips. Whenever I do weighted pull-ups naturally my volume goes down a little and then the maximum amount of reps I can do in a set goes down.
I feel like this pyramid style of training worked amazing for getting to me to 20 pull-ups but now I feel stuck struggling to simply maintain that number much less reach 30. I’m unsure how to proceed. I also had ambitions to one day do 20 weighted pull-ups with 45lbs attached, but when I began training that and reached 11 reps my unweighted pull-ups dropped from 22 to 16. I used a weighted version of the Russian fighter pull-up program when I did this.
I’d like to know what I’m doing wrong and what adjustments I should make in the way I approach training pull-ups.
I typically do a pull-up or chin-up pyramid starting with a set of 1 rep , then 2 reps, building up to a set of 10 clean reps and then back down to a set of 1 rep. With 90 seconds of rest in between and 100 total clean reps in the workout. I’ll do this workout about 3 times a week and sometimes superset it with weighted dips. Whenever I do weighted pull-ups naturally my volume goes down a little and then the maximum amount of reps I can do in a set goes down.
I feel like this pyramid style of training worked amazing for getting to me to 20 pull-ups but now I feel stuck struggling to simply maintain that number much less reach 30. I’m unsure how to proceed. I also had ambitions to one day do 20 weighted pull-ups with 45lbs attached, but when I began training that and reached 11 reps my unweighted pull-ups dropped from 22 to 16. I used a weighted version of the Russian fighter pull-up program when I did this.
I’d like to know what I’m doing wrong and what adjustments I should make in the way I approach training pull-ups.