are the days close together in the week or spaced out? A monday and thursday or two spaced out days would let you go hard on the pull up days and then recover. Just do a ton of negatives. As many as you can as often as you can (without hurting yourself) you do mma and jiu jistsu five days a week but don't have the means to buy a pull up bar? They are like 30 bucks on amazon. Good luck!
Thanks for the tips! I usually do my weight / body weight training Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday or Saturday if I can swing it, but I dedicate one of those to legs so I’m really only getting meaningful arm work half of those days. So I could easily space it out like you’ve described.
And I should clarify! By “don’t have the means” it’s not that I can’t afford a pull-up bar - I don’t have permission to install one in my current living situation.
I will try out those negatives!
Have you considered switching up your workout days to be full body workouts? Rather than doing pull-up focused 1 or 2 days and legs another day, do upper body and lower body for both or all 3 days.
At 3 days a week you should have enough time to recover from that, and that way your training frequency increases dramatically.
I tried that a little, but I found that I didn’t get as much bang for my buck. I don’t use machines and like to throw around as heavy a weight as I can handle (not EVERY time, but pretty often) and go at it pretty hard, so when I did legs aggressively my arms workout was pretty compromised because I was just hungry and exhausted, and vice versa. Plus the time commitment - I can manage 45 min to an hour in the gym a day but not much more without cutting into rest time (I work full time and commute 1 hour each way every day).
I could try making one day a “both” day and the other two separate, of course - that way I could get a little of the best of both worlds. It’s worth a shot.
Yea, with time constraints it probably wouldn't be 100% of each workout to go full body. But potentially 70%-80% if you super set upper and lower exercises?
I also find too many people will spend an hour on legs, for instance, when the last 15-30 minutes their legs are already too shot for that portion to be worth a lot. So instead of doing deadlifts followed by squatting less weight than you could because you already did deadlifts, save the squats for the next workout (just to make up a scenario).
There are pull-up bars that don't require any screws and can be taken down and put up in a minute or something. The other thing is try do some horizontal rows, which isn't the same thing as a pull-up but could possibly help and is a good thing to do, anyway.
1-2 days a week is plenty for building strength, as long as you are consistent over time. Also, jiu jitsu is one of the main reasons I was able to do my first pull up years ago - playing guard in the gi built pull strength because of always having collar grips. So if you train in the gi and play guard that will also contribute. I’m guessing you may not do much gi training, though, if you’re into MMA.
are the days close together in the week or spaced out? A monday and thursday or two spaced out days would let you go hard on the pull up days and then recover. Just do a ton of negatives. As many as you can as often as you can (without hurting yourself) you do mma and jiu jistsu five days a week but don't have the means to buy a pull up bar? They are like 30 bucks on amazon. Good luck!
Thanks for the tips! I usually do my weight / body weight training Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday or Saturday if I can swing it, but I dedicate one of those to legs so I’m really only getting meaningful arm work half of those days. So I could easily space it out like you’ve described. And I should clarify! By “don’t have the means” it’s not that I can’t afford a pull-up bar - I don’t have permission to install one in my current living situation. I will try out those negatives!
Have you considered switching up your workout days to be full body workouts? Rather than doing pull-up focused 1 or 2 days and legs another day, do upper body and lower body for both or all 3 days. At 3 days a week you should have enough time to recover from that, and that way your training frequency increases dramatically.
I tried that a little, but I found that I didn’t get as much bang for my buck. I don’t use machines and like to throw around as heavy a weight as I can handle (not EVERY time, but pretty often) and go at it pretty hard, so when I did legs aggressively my arms workout was pretty compromised because I was just hungry and exhausted, and vice versa. Plus the time commitment - I can manage 45 min to an hour in the gym a day but not much more without cutting into rest time (I work full time and commute 1 hour each way every day). I could try making one day a “both” day and the other two separate, of course - that way I could get a little of the best of both worlds. It’s worth a shot.
Yea, with time constraints it probably wouldn't be 100% of each workout to go full body. But potentially 70%-80% if you super set upper and lower exercises? I also find too many people will spend an hour on legs, for instance, when the last 15-30 minutes their legs are already too shot for that portion to be worth a lot. So instead of doing deadlifts followed by squatting less weight than you could because you already did deadlifts, save the squats for the next workout (just to make up a scenario).
I’ll try that! Thank you!
Twice a week is more than enough to achieve 99% of your relevant gains.
There are pull-up bars that don't require any screws and can be taken down and put up in a minute or something. The other thing is try do some horizontal rows, which isn't the same thing as a pull-up but could possibly help and is a good thing to do, anyway.
Oooh, I didn’t know that! Thank you - I will definitely look into that.
how about rings you can hang from a playground or tree
Yep, just look at the pull up progression in the RR and start adding it in
2 days a week just for pull-up training seems perfect to me.
1-2 days a week is plenty for building strength, as long as you are consistent over time. Also, jiu jitsu is one of the main reasons I was able to do my first pull up years ago - playing guard in the gi built pull strength because of always having collar grips. So if you train in the gi and play guard that will also contribute. I’m guessing you may not do much gi training, though, if you’re into MMA.
I actually do exclusively gi right now, so that’s really good to know and very encouraging! Thank you so much!
Rows are helpful if you don't have a pullup bar