Tips on unassisted negative weight training at home?

rubadub

I was helped a lot doing negatives with pull ups. I would stand on a small box and lower myself down slowly for 10 reps. The same can be done with chin-ups. Now I have got to a level of doing 8-10 pull ups and chin ups so I will be adding weight to a backpack and doing negatives again.

With dumbells I can lift them doing bicep curls assisted by my other hand and lower it slowly.

My new plan is to make a loop that will pass over a dumbell's ends, this will have rope attached and it will be slung over my chinup bar. Then I can rest on my knees and do one hand military/arnold presses. I will have the end of the rope held with my spare hand, I can pull on this to assist my positive lift of the excess weight, then I can loosen my pull on the rope while lowering it to achieve a heavy negative.
I reckon I could us the same method for doing tricep extensions too.

Has anybody else got tips or ideas for doing negatives at home?

iregk

Sorry mate, im totally lost here!!!!

t-ha

rubadub wrote:

Has anybody else got tips or ideas for doing negatives at home?

Just one, if you're doing very heavy negatives (approaching or exceeding what you could lift for 1 rep) then don't do them too often. After a few weeks you might burn out or start to pick up injuries.

And em, if you have that rope slung over the chin-up bar I guess you could use it for negative pistol squats too?

rubadub

iregk wrote:

Sorry mate, im totally lost here!!!!

Take the standard bicep curl. It is easier to lower a heavy weight than to lift it up in the first place. Some studies show that there is more "work" done on the muscle on the lowering "negative" phase of the lift. So if you lift a single dumbell with your right hand, and aid the lift with your left hand then you can let go and lower the weight with just your right hand.

If you cannot do a single pull up you can stand on a box, and lower yourself down slowly, this works pretty much most of the same muscles needed to pull yourself up, so after a few weeks of doing this you will be able to do unassisted pull-ups.

Negative work is easier to do with the right equipment and people helping you (like doing a bench press negative). I am looking for ways to do it at home easily.

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t-ha wrote:

And em, if you have that rope slung over the chin-up bar I guess you could use it for negative pistol squats too?

Yes! not only that, it could help the balance doing them, I cannot do them at the moment due to balance (or lack of).

rubadub

I tried this last night and it works better than I expected. Tried it on my knees but it is too hard to balance so I got a chair which worked well. I needed the chair to do the weighted chin ups (chin downs?;) ) and pull ups. Added and extra 20kg to my chinups and pullups.

I upped my one arm military presses and bicep curls from a usual ~16.5kg to 21.5kg. Could only do about 6 presses and 8 curls. Felt like it was one of my first times lifting all over again. It feels very safe and it is easier to go to failure since you are spotting yourself with the other hand, keeping it just a tiny bit slack. I upped the tricep extensions from about 11.5kg to 14.5kg, these worked very well, I am often hesistant about how far down I go on my overhead extensions, afraid that I wont get it back again. I was able to drop very slow right down as far as my arm could go, I could only manage 2 sets of 5 reps on these.
Should work great for lat raises too.

rubadub

rubadub wrote:

Negative work is easier to do with the right equipment and people helping you (like doing a bench press negative). I am looking for ways to do it at home easily.

Well I figured out the way to do negatives on my chest. In another thread I was talking about the benefits of using push up bars. You can line them up in a line so they replicate holding a bar. The extra height from the ground means you can go really deep on the push up so it is like touching a barbell off your chest. I do them with 20kg in a backpack. For the negatives I do slow deep pushups until failure, then I put my knees on the ground, this makes it far easier to push myself back up again, then I lift my knees and lower myself down very slowly and can squeeze another 4-5 reps out.

Next time I will try with even higher weights in the back pack so I can only manage 8-10 reps in total, including the knee assisted reps.