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Bodyweight Pull ups and chest training

Sorry can you clarify - do you mean you think ROP is minimalist or that S&S is not minimalist?
I meant that both ROP and S&S are minimalist.

And that non-minimalist training will lead to much better results in absolute terms (i.e. more strength, hypertrophy, and/ conditioning).

Individual situations will of course vary. If you live a super busy life with young kids and a career etc, as I do, you may have no other choice but minimalism. Just don't kid yourself that the results will be anywhere near as good if you ran more well rounded programs.

I stress I'm talking in absolute terms. If you only want to be a bit strong and a bit conditioned, you wouldn't run a 6 day per week PL program, for example.
 
I meant that both ROP and S&S are minimalist.

And that non-minimalist training will lead to much better results in absolute terms (i.e. more strength, hypertrophy, and/ conditioning).

Individual situations will of course vary. If you live a super busy life with young kids and a career etc, as I do, you may have no other choice but minimalism. Just don't kid yourself that the results will be anywhere near as good if you ran more well rounded programs.

I stress I'm talking in absolute terms. If you only want to be a bit strong and a bit conditioned, you wouldn't run a 6 day per week PL program, for example.
Interesting, I never would’ve considered ROP minimalist - C&P, pull-ups, swings, snatches and two optional variety days. I guess compared to some things it is, just never thought about it!
 
Playing devils advocate…

Specificity. I don’t think it’s productive to leave muscles completely untrained so if your goal is a big kettlebell press and 20 BW pull ups why waste time and recovery points doing dips if pull ups do in fact hit the chest? If they don’t at all it’s worth doing some chest work though
It boils down to your expectations and what you want to avoid or accomplish by trying to make sure your chest is being trained.

That part creates the confusion in this thread.

A big KB press and 20 BW pull ups (I don’t know where you are at with pull ups) are serious goals that would need focus and demand energy.

If I were you and if I was concerned about adding size to my chest. I would do my press and pull up work outs and then throw in some chest isolation exercises as finishers in some days with the tools that I have in my possession. Some sort of pec flies or pull overs etc. One isolation exercise will not create a systemic fatigue that would hinder your progress in other areas. Dips, work chest for sure but will create an extra high systemic demand that will take a way your energy from other goals.

Isolation exercises are like make up :) if your goal is to “beautify” an area, you can throw in one of them at the end of your work out and they create wonders in terms of hypertrophy without taking your energy and time. You don’t need an extra thinking about it do one or two AMAP sets in the days you have time and its done.

Some isolation exercises are much better than make up :) Y raises are great example and good for the health of shoulder.

I don’t use them anymore. I think compound exercises give the biggest ROI for sure. But if I were concerned about hypertrophy of only one particular area, then I would do them as finishers.
 
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I think a lot of this comes from the DESIRE for minimalism to be able to tick all boxes. I too wish pullups trained chest/horizontal pressing adequately.
Dips and bench improve the press. Not many around here are trying to get an Arnold chest.

Dips and bench also increase total body strength.
As do pullups, squats, deadlifts, and KB press.

I guess we have gone fairly off the rails here.

Something about pullups building the chest?

If you have a weak back you won't be able to bench much.
 
For sure. Minimalism isn't a synonym for "great at everything". It's good at the thing it's designed for.
For example, PTTP is a great classic minimalist strength program. But it is an awful program to train for your next powerlifting meet.

Pullups, swings, and presses are a great minimalist program... But its an awful program for chest development. (ETK has a whole section dedicated to how it doesn't build "breast like pecs" aka develop the chest)
Respectfully I disagree. ROP has squared and firmed up my chest nicely.

People pay good money to have their manboobs surgically removed. Why would you spend your precious life force in trying to develop them?
 
Now I'm curious what people think maximalist training looks like...
Marty Gallagher's training is described as minimalist by Pavel and he has like 20 different exercises a week in his cycles.
I always thought that a minimalist program was one consisting of two to three exercises. So a minimalist powerlifting plan would be exclusively squat, bench and deadlift.

To clarify, I’m not looking to follow a minimalist plan. My gym training currently consists of squats, deadlifts, dips, pull ups, kettlebell presses, snatches, swings, a few get ups here and there and a whole bunch of ab exercises like roll outs, suspension trainer body saws etc etc. Sometimes I even venture to the leg press!! Omg I know.

I do think it’s worth knowing though as if pull ups do give a good-enough-if-not-great chest stimulus then in the pursuit of say a press/pull up goal you can ignore chest training. If it doesn’t give any attention to the chest at all though you’d want to include some on the side as ignoring muscles is not a good idea even on a minimalist plan.
 
It boils down to your expectations and what you want to avoid or accomplish by trying to make sure your chest is being trained.
Personally I need to make my whole body stronger and avoid having any weaknesses in a way that carries over to my sport and makes me more injury resistant whilst minimising fatigue so I can train harder for competition.

So I guess if pull ups were a great chest builder I could stop doing dips and have an easier time recovering which would lead to a better outcome. It’s not about what I WANT to be true though but rather what IS.
 
Minimalist training should be define as the minimal amount of training that someone have that could still drive them to their goal. For instance, if the goal is hypertrophy, one hard sets to failure for a muscle group can be consider as minimalist training.
 
A few people I've known will say they can never hit as good a bench after pull up training or as many pull ups after benching
Yes that's probably true, we need a huge amount of tightness in upper back and in the lower lats to stabilize the the weight while benching. But benching it self doesn't do much for the lats.

Another about chest tension: some lifters experience a huge chest tension when pulling sumo...but I doubt that someone would use sumo as the main way to improve chest strength
 
Minimalist training should be define as the minimal amount of training that someone have that could still drive them to their goal. For instance, if the goal is hypertrophy, one hard sets to failure for a muscle group can be consider as minimalist training.
That’s just minimum effective dose. A quality of every good training plan
 
Personally I need to make my whole body stronger and avoid having any weaknesses in a way that carries over to my sport and makes me more injury resistant whilst minimising fatigue so I can train harder for competition.

So I guess if pull ups were a great chest builder I could stop doing dips and have an easier time recovering which would lead to a better outcome. It’s not about what I WANT to be true though but rather what IS.
I understand, it is first time I hear that you want to address your chest to perform better at and/or prevent injury for a certain sport. Don’t get me wrong I am not opposing to your thinking, I am just sharing my thoughts. I think when it comes to sports specific training, we should be thinking about the movement patterns that we need strength in a given plane or we should be thinking like, I am over emphasizing this and that movement pattern in my sports which creates an imbalance that I want to address by working the opposite or supportive movement pattern.
 
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I meant that both ROP and S&S are minimalist.

And that non-minimalist training will lead to much better results in absolute terms (i.e. more strength, hypertrophy, and/ conditioning).

Individual situations will of course vary. If you live a super busy life with young kids and a career etc, as I do, you may have no other choice but minimalism. Just don't kid yourself that the results will be anywhere near as good if you ran more well rounded programs.

I stress I'm talking in absolute terms. If you only want to be a bit strong and a bit conditioned, you wouldn't run a 6 day per week PL program, for example.
Honestly, I respectfully don’t agree because this is a too much a generic statement because strength, being conditioned, hypertrophy are all specific terms. They mean sth with in a context. And within any given context the one who is more focused will have a higher chance to be better.

If strength definition is pushing a heavy sled. The guy who pushes only heavy sled will win against a guy who does dips, pull ups, biceps curls, deadlifts. Strength is definitely a specific skill in my opinion. A guy who can push a heavy sled will not be able to do 10 HSPUs how do we define strength?

Hypertrophy work is bloated by the programs or role models that uses PEDs. A non enhanced person, in order to develop the highest amount of lean muscle mass need to focus on a handful exercises for a very long time dedicated to hard hypertrophy training to maximize muscle mass. Someone to get better lean mass hypertrophy out of a biceps curl than an extra set of press or a squat, that person should be getting closer to genetic size potential which very rare people gets to.

Conditioning is again specific but especially when it comes to conditioning, to be good, to be really very very good, I think you only need one exercise. I know guys with perfect conditioning and they only run.

Sorry, but not trying to defend minimalist programs . I am indeed trying to teach my self the strength of focus. 99% of people who exercise including me, need to do more of a smaller number of things.
 
Next time you press a KB overhead with your right arm, put your left hand on your right chest. You should feel the chest muscles working.
 
because strength, being conditioned, hypertrophy are all specific terms.
They are only specific to specific events.

Eg marathon runner is conditioned for long distances, but is going to struggle with a loaded carry medley.
 
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Next time you press a KB overhead with your right arm, put your left hand on your right chest. You should feel the chest muscles working.
I mean... on a press my glutes and calves are firing too. But I wouldn't call it good at developing my glutes and calves.
They want to remove fat, and sometimes nipples from having too high prolactin for a long time.
It's nothing to do with having too thick chest muscle
Agreed. If someone believes "developing the chest" means losing fat, then sure, presses pullups and swings are fine. But in its common usage, not the most effective choice.
 
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