I found a whole lat pull down tower once on a street corner that someone wanted to get rid off. I just took the bar and attached it to my heavy bag attachement under the ceiling. My greatest pull up device for years, because of the wide grip/ narrow grip options and its instability.
I had exactly that - it was sold as a center-mount pullup bar, but you're right - it's the same thing as the handle for lat pulldowns. For me, it was too much instability to be an effective training device. I suspect though, as you say, it could be valuable for some people.
I notice you are the guy who does the mountain strong posts about climbing etc. I was a climber, well an indoor boulderer, until I dislocated my talus after a fall and just kinda lost confidence. Climbing, even in the limited capacity of bouldering indoors developed muscles in my body I’ve never had since and shredded most of the body fat off of me in short order. I still have pop eye forearms and that’s also why I bought climbing implements to attach to my chin up bar etc but to stay on topic lol even as a “climber” I utterly blew at pull-ups and chins.
That’s a pretty common bouldering injury.
Dislocated talus. I was told as I lay pumped full of morphine by the doctors that they had to phone around and get advice as they had never seen a dislocated talus. Told me I had better odds winning the lottery and they took photos to put in the British Medical Journal. They had to give me general anaesthetic to pop it all back in told me that I might need it fused together which thankfully never happened. Now you mention it I do remember a few climbers with stretch bands at the climbing centre doing the exercises I was given to rehab my ankle. Bloody quacks pulling my leg? Lol
Yeah I like grip training. Some of those climbing devices had to first be attached to kettlebell handles and deadlifted before I could haul my carcass off the deck hanging them from a bar. My absolute favourites are the wooden balls. I’m always in the lookout for other devices.
Been playing with towel hangs lately. They are pretty crazy on the fingers. The Kids rock-wall in my fitness center (I’m an elementary PE teacher) has a ton of extra holds lying around. I’ve been considering bringing a couple home to hang from the support beams on my back porch/courage corner. I could Would look great next to my pull up bar.
My son just had a subtalar fusion, 3 yrs after a climbing accident in Yosemite NP where he fractured some of the talus bone when he hit his foot on a ledge as he fell and the rope caught him. It was painful and he limped pretty bad for those 3 years... a couple of failed surgeries and a few shots and finally decided to go ahead with the fusion. He's 26 yrs old now. But he's currently in Colorado skiing and snowboarding, so I guess it's doing alright. Says it's finally less painful. Interesting feature of that joint though... he told me to stand on one leg. Said, you know what joint you're using to do that? Subtalar joint. He can't do that anymore on the fused foot. This web page calls the subtalar joint "the body's steering wheel." I can't imagine it being dislocated! I guess you found a joint you didn't know you had. Glad to hear it recovered.
I “luckily” only dislocated mine. I suppose if you’ve ever went over on an ankle that’s how mine went when I hit a crash mat no less. Everyone thought my initial roar was because I’d missed the move I was going for and was frustrated. Lol I’m sorry to hear your boy got his fused but if it’s helped then that’s something. I’m running on it these days and it’s fine almost 20 years later. For a long time it was my own barometer. It would kill me and id say “it’s going to rain”. Lol as soon as it did the pain would go.
solved.
On the other hand, some very successful climbers have taken pull-ups to an extreme, and seem to do well with it. Check out the training program of Dmitry Sharafutdinov (triple wold champion, bouldering world cup winner) here: Bouldertraining: Das 700-Klimmzüge-System des Boulder-Weltmeisters It's in German, the gist of it is that Dmitry compensated for the lack of climbing facilities in his hometown by building up to extreme volumes of pull-ups. He does around 700 reps per session according to the article, 20 drop sets each with 40 and 50 kg added (accounting for around 300 reps, how he gets in the other +- 400 reps isn't specified). His 1 RM was + 72 kg at a bodyweight of 57-62 kg at the time the article was published, and and he managed 15 reps in a row with 40 kg added. What is even more impressive are the drop sets - if he could do 14 reps @ +40 kg a mere four minutes after doing 15, it stands to reason it was a fairly submaximal effort - and/or he has incredible recovery ability. Looking at the program, I'd say the main thing it does is boost work capacity. I'd reckon it allowed him to get in pretty extreme volumes of high intensity boulder problems whenever he did manage to go to a good climbing location.
Yeah man. Iron wolf had me bust out 1000 push-ups in a session. That guys approach is volume gold.
This is true. At world class levels all bets are off as far as training goes. Especially in a comp setting on artificial walls.
1000 pull-ups a day. That’s inhuman.
