Dense Chin Ups

So it's 10v1, 40 kilos. My best logged on the leaderboards on the new Athlete project app is 47, but that was a little while ago, so we're going to build back to that. The overall best is Nils from Germany with 52 and a half. Yeah, very nice. That's a nice higher lock off. Marcel coming over from Czech Republic to Vanuatu, showing us some nice chins. We've done a few reps now with the clock on. Let's talking to Marcel about it. So, bill, I joined three by three. The power lift or strength athlete might do three by three. They might do it on around five minutes. So they do it on zero again at five minutes, they do another set of three and then on 10 minutes, they do another set of 3. It's pretty much the same. They've done nine reps in 10 minutes. They've done a heavy three by three in the traditional way. Now, this is a dense style and we're going to do 10 repetitions in that same time. But we're doing more weight than I could do for 3x3, so we're doing a bit more intensity. I definitely couldn't do this for 3x3, but I can get close to doing it for 10d1. We'll see where we get to. But every rep you get to go at it fresh, so it lets you work with more intensity. But I think I'll even be fresher than if I did 3x3. If I was going to do 3x3, probably like 35, 32 and a half, 35 kilos. And honestly think I would feel more fatigued from doing that than from doing this. It's also a very accountable, clear system. It's easy to stay focused. If you do 3x3, you got a long time to sit around. You could go and do something else in the rests, but you can also get lost into the phone, lost into another world. So you get into higher quality of work, more focused work. It's gamified. So it's a bit addictive to come back and be like, yeah, that was pretty easy. I think I'm going to get the 42 and a half. Or be like, yeah, I don't know if I can get more. Maybe I need to work on my 10D3, come back to the 10D1 when I've done some more work. That's the gamification of dance, which makes a lot of fun, especially when you use the leaderboards. Leaderboards aren't just about, I'm better than you and ego and all that stuff. It's about beating yourself, tracking your own progress and just seeing what's possible with others.

Just started experimenting with this style of training maybe a month or two ago, and it definitely makes my workouts faster, better quality work. Like, I used to rest in between sets really a long time and get stuck in the phone and then maybe rest more than I was planning on to. And yeah, this just keeps my workout short and like always done within hours, hour and a half, depending on what I'm doing. Yeah, and stay more focused. You stay more in the zone.

Two to three blocks of dance is generally enough strength work for a session, plus maybe some. Some circuits or something more complex with more variety of movements, more variety of skills. But two to three is plenty. You think, well, that's only 20, 30 minutes work. But if you do that consistently, generally do that five, six days a week. If I'm following this kind of template, like the muscle club template, for example, stay fresh, but you're making progress every day. Generally it's different movements each day. Come around once a week, maybe twice a week, depending on the program. Generally once a week, come back, repeat.

Last week, start adding small weight each week, like a kilo, 2.5 kilos. And like the progress. Can see it from week to week, satisfying.

You can also progress in the reps. So if you went a little bit more conservative with the weight, then you can progress to doing one rep, the next set, do two reps and then go back to one rep again. Next set, two reps, alternating things like that, or 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2. And then you work your way up to doing 10 sets of two. Or I also like doing 20 sets, 20 singles or 20 triples, up to 20 sets of five. Really good way to add size if you want to get strong fast. Going from 23s to 25s. You can also probably identify where your weakest part is. For me, I'm getting the bar to here, but I'm not getting it down here. So I need to do a little bit more work here. So at the end I'm going to do that as the drop set. A lot of pulses at the top to strengthen up that very top part. Haven't been working hard on the chins for a little while, so I'm a little bit below max. But 40 for five, I think is my best for reps and around 57 and a half for one or 60 for one. You've got to get that accountability if you're just messing around on your own. And no one cares whether you go get your training sessions done or not. You're not going to get as far. If no one cares when you progress, then you're not going to get as far. Put yourself in an environment where you're going to just consistently do that a little bit more than what you might have otherwise done. That's how you build excellence. All the best athletes build that around them. Whether it's through having a coach, whether it's by having the Olympics coming up, whether it's by having a great training squad partner to work with who helps you push to a new standard. You got to get those standards going.

I tried two reps on the last one.

Yeah. So what were you thinking going into this block?

Yeah, I didn't think I could do 40 kilos, honestly. I was like thinking about doing 30, but then King Ranger was like, try one.

I tried one.

It felt pretty heavy. But honestly, as soon as we started, like, like the first set was hard, the second one was a bit easier and the third one was like the easiest. And then I started getting hard slowly.

Yeah.

But surprised myself. I think I could do more, more with next week.

Could you have done 20 sets of one?

I think so, yeah.

Yeah. It's good to finish knowing that you could do a little bit more. Occasionally you can get to the very end, but then you should probably change the movement next time. You work on pull ups, or you work on threes, or you do 20 sets or you change the game in some way. You don't want to always be on the limit. The goal with strength training is to stay within the comfort zone enough that, that you can come back and do better the next training session, that you don't scorch your nervous system. So you're excited still to get out of bed the next day and also to train the next day. So, yeah, that, that feels like a repeatable type effort that we did there. I think it was about the sweet spot. I wouldn't want to go much harder than that, honestly. Like, people think they see people train on the Internet and they're like crushing themselves. And I was talking about failure and screaming and like there was no screaming there, but that, that's pretty much upper intensity. I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to be going harder than that because it'll just take the edge off next training. And it's all about development. It really doesn't. You don't need to go to that extra, extra level. I was just reading the handbook from Nico, which is also in the app if you want to check it out. In the new Athlete Project app, you can get Nico's handbook. And the first lesson is don't go too hard. I forget the exact wording of it, but that's the, that's the message. Like everyone thinks they need to smash themselves, but it's not really about that for the long game of strength.

Yeah, I used to do it a lot. I would always train until like failure and then it would just leave me wrecked for the rest of the day and the day after. Like I wouldn't function in other aspects of my life. So it just felt like all I'm doing is I'm just training and then rest of the day I'm just so wrecked that I don't want to do anything else. And it's probably not the best way to live. Even if training is your expression. Yeah, 100.

Yeah. Even I think it's, you get better gains anyway. Like that's the, the point that Nico is getting at is like you get so much stronger when you stay fresh. You come back confident. That's the thing. Like with Denson, there's other methods as well that we use, but they should be self limiting where you don't want to go too hard. I think that's the main thing that the best coaches, powerlifting coaches, the weightlifting coaches, they're capping the intensity. So it's like they're doing amazing quality work and heavy work, but you see that they're just, they're not going to that grinding position. They're not risking injury, but they're also just not scorching the nervous system. If you, if you push really, really hard with the nervous system, it can take a week or two weeks to recover from and then all those other days you're not getting a good stimulus. So hope that was valuable. Questions, comments, other videos you'd like to see, things you learn about dance from the video, please feel free to contribute. You can get involved on the leaderboards in the new Athlete Project app. There's a thousand places there at the moment. It's open for free for you to come in, get involved, check it out. You can also register which village you'd like to come to, which event you'd like to come to meet other men from around the world who are on this path, building health, building skills, building force. Marcel is one of them. He's chosen to come over here from Czech Republic, from New Zealand, via New Zealand. He's in on the mission, in on the journey and yeah, I'm learning from him. We're doing good stuff together, and that's. That's what it's all about. So get in the app, get involved. You can do it. Even whatever state you're in at the moment, if you feel like you're not ready for it. The way get ready for it is to do exactly what we just did there. Put the weight on, test yourself, surprise yourself.