When you’re too fatigued to do a single repetition …
- Of any exercise, really.

To me, this applies – curiously enough, to the bodyweight exercise Guru whose favorite bodyweight exercise and like the Marines, one he prides himself on the most – pull-ups.

Before you start wondering whats up, well, hear me out first pal.

First, I’m human like you, once you start getting beyond rep #150 on a pull-up workout – not only YOU – but I start to feel it too.

Two, and more importantly, and this is a key difference between when I wrote Battletank Shoulders for one, I dont – well, not at the moment at least have “easy” access to the monkey bars I used when I wrote that book.

In that book, you’ll see how I mixed in pull-ups with monkey bar work – a tried and tested technique to build the upper body of a strong sinewy APE – and then work in pushups, specifically those done on thy fingertips to build a corrugated “rock solid, kung fu like unnatural pull to you it x 10” grip.

If you’ve DONE the workouts, you will know what I mean or what Charles, a customer here once told me “I dont see how anyone can do those workouts unless they’re part Gorilla!”

And hence, Vol #3 in the series – to turn you into 70% Gorilla – “Profound 70% Gorilla 30% Human Handstands” – another very well, profoundly received book in fact, and the bridge to the next one i.e. freestanding handstands, whenever that comes out.

No pun either.

Anyway

This is about a different topic, I suppose I could also make it over how I almost fell over in a free standing handstand today … but lets stick to pull-ups, the former is even more difficult for most people to do right or at all.

Look, another reason my pull-up workouts are this tough these days is I focus on ONE style of pull-ups – today that was the regular grip pull-up, thick gripz, 50 reps, and believe me, if you apply super focus on form, do ’em slow and steady – oh yes, you will FEEL it (I did 100 pushups too in a similar vein, mostly TOUGHIES. The only somewhat “easy” work I did was 250 squats and the splits..) (and some club work – light).

So thats a solid workout unto itself, but anyway, when you’re too tired, or feel fatigued to rep out another one?

I’ve told you for one it’s all about the mental, but we wont get into that here.

Physically, what you can do is this – either stop the workout at a somewhat lower number than you normally would (if thats 25, maybe you stop at 16, or 18 – trust me, you’ll know when the number comes).

Or, and even better, you slow down the tempo of the workout.

And you focus – both mentally and physically on FORM.

This may mean your reps take longer to complete which is fine if you’re too fatigued to go fast (you’ll lose form if you do, if you even can).

But thats fine!

You’ll literally work the muscles to the BONE this way if you do what I’m saying above. and you will grow – like a damn weed as well if you do it right.

Some of the pull-ups I’m doing in terms of the regular pull-up, well, they’re so tough I can only do 3-5 reps in proper form per set.

And as I finished rep #50, I feel GONE.

And exhilarated.

I think I’ll knock out 20 more slow and steady pushups and be done for the day, or will I?

We’ll see.

Hehe.

For now, thats that.

And I’ll be back soon.

Best

Rahul Mookerjee

PS – To learn how to do pull-ups effectively at a high level, bang ’em out butter smooth “easy peasy lemon squeezy”, get the world famous course on it, truly the JEWEL in the crown it’s been called right HERE.

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