Increasing chin-up weight

scoey

For the last 7 weeks, I've been doing weighted chin ups and dips in the park a couple of times a week and squats and deadlifts once a week. Before that I was travelling for a few months and didn't do any excercise(apart from walking).

When I started I had 6kg in the bag while doing the chins and dips. I've been doing 5 sets of 5 reps on the chins and 3 sets of 8 reps on dips. Not sure how it ended up like that, it just suited me... After the 5x5 weighted chins, I always do one set of unweighted chins to failure, and usually get to about 15 or 16.

Anyway, for the last 7 weeks, I've been making decent strength gains on the chins every week. I'm up to 5 sets of 5 reps of 21kg now. However, for the last couple of weeks I've noticed I haven't been able to put up the weight as much/quickly as before. Is this to be expected, after the initial "beginner" gains?? Or is there some sort of method that I'll need to use to keep increasing the weight?? I'm not having this problem with the dips, although I'm doing the same weight on them, for convenience sake, as my workout goes chins,dips,chins, dips, etc.

I really don't think I'm overtraining, as I only workout 3 times a week, and never on consecutive days. I'm 21 years old, 170lbs and 6ft. I eat 3 really BIG meals every day, each of which consists of a lot(about 300gs) of beef or pork and a lot of Japanese rice(I'm currently in Japan), along with drinking at least 3 litres of full fat milk, about 6 eggs, and a load of fruit/maybe a couple of snacks throughout the day. I'm not fat... I cycle about an hour and 20 minutes about 4 times a week(to go to college). This is probably fairly superflous, but I thought perhaps eating habits, size and amount of cardio might have some bearing on strength gains.

So, any recemmendations of a good method to keep increasing the weight on chin-ups??

c - 13

170 KG !! Thats surely a typo ? If not and you can do weighted dips and chins at that weight you sir have my utmost respect.

scoey

Haha, stupid typo, I meant to say pounds. Edited now. All the other weights are kilos.

edges

It's natural to tail off after the initial increases, but don't let that phase you.
If you get to a weight that you just can't get past, change the set and rep numbers.

5x5 is 25 reps, 6x4 gives 24 reps but may let you go heavier. Or stick with the same weight, the same 5 sets but try add an extra rep to the total, it may look like this 6,6,5,5,5, total reps now 27. Next time go for 6,6,6,5,5.

Or a favorite of mine is the EDT method, here's the simple method. You need a stopwatch. Time your workout (5x5 chins and dips) and make a note. All you need to do now is keep the time the same while increaseing the reps. Don't worry about sets, rest when you need to, just so long as either the rep count goes up or the time goes down.
As a guideline increse the weight everytime you make a 10% increase in reps within the time limit you set.

You don't always need to change the weight, adjusting the other variables can have a profound effect on your strength and performance.

All the best

Dave
www.WG-Fit.com

rubadub

I find negatives are good for kickstarting you again.

scoey

Thanks a lot for the tips edges, I'll give them a shot.

Rubadub, regarding negatives, how should I go about them? Say I'm currently on 21kg chins, should I do negatives with something a good bit heavier, or just a bit? How many should I do? Should I do them instead of normal chins one day, or before/after my normal sets or something?

rubadub

I really just do whatever feels good. Today I was doing 5 reps with 20kg, then immediately did 5 more negatives reps with no break, last 2 were pullups. In the past I did them solely as negatives, i.e. no normal reps, just about 10 negatives with 30kg.

I like to stick to a 15rep maximum, this can be a combination of normal reps, and negatives at the end.

I would go easy the first day trying them. I find them very easy to do, and worry about overdoing it.

I have a little box beside me during my normal chins, I then just step up on one leg so there is no pause moving stuff in or out of the way.

"greasing the groove" also improved my chins, check this thread