A Higher Volume Workout Challenge

Crank It UP!

This past Wednesday, we decided to tackle a somewhat advanced challenge, and upped the volume a little bit. The workout below is fairly advanced (especially if you adjust the weights to your current level). It’s a smorgasbord of favorite methods, and putting them all together like this is a little bit crazy – however with care, good form and good judgement it was a safe and very productive session. Use your discretion with this one, and it’s totally OK to just use parts and pieces in your own workout creations.

Adjusting Training Volume…

In a previous article about EMOM workouts I briefly mentioned how much I like to apply EMOM workouts in an off-label way for getting more pull-up reps into a workout. As you advance in your training (I’m currently working back up to multiple sets of 10 pull-ups – as of last night I’m at 10-7-7), it can be useful to re-assess the training volume with this off-label application.  We’re currently using a multi-prong approach to pull-up training to get the overall number of reps up as well as to increase the number of good reps possible in an all-out set. I am not going to cover the approach here since it’s something I’m still doing some long term testing on (with myself and others).  BUT, one of the “prongs” is one session a week with this EMOM approach.

Now that all the participants are up to a minimum of 7 max pull-up reps (YMMV), I kicked up the overall volume in the EMOM portion of the workout by increasing the number of pull-up reps to 3 and overall time to 12 minutes instead of 10. When we began the program, it was 2x pull-ups and a total of 10 minutes (20 total reps). The next step was 2x pull-ups over 12 minutes (24 total reps), then 3x pull-ups over 10 minutes (30) a few weeks later. Wednesday made for 36 total reps during the workout – and with enough rest (easy sets of pushups and squats rounded out each minute) to ensure that each of the 36 pull-ups were full range of motion, and high quality. It sounds funny, but I regard the 60 push-ups and 120 squats in this part of the workout as active rest.

Staying Warm in the Garage with a Little Metabolic Training…

The weather has finally cooled off (and kept going), so I wanted to make sure we kept the garage toasty. So there was a brief interlude of nearly all-out madness with a Tabata*-inspired interval interlude. We paired burpees and swings which allowed us to shed a layer and keep working out for the rest of the session.

Here’s Our Challenge Workout:

Joint Mobility Warmup

Warmup Circuit 3x:

• 10x Kettlebell Swings (moderate weight – 16kg, 20kg)
• 1x Prying Goblet Squats (same kettlebell if it makes sense)

12 Minute Bodyweight EMOM:
(goal: high quality pull-ups and active rest with high quality pushups and bodyweight squats)

• 3x Full range of motion, dead hang pull-ups
• 5x Push-Ups
• 10x Squats

Tabata-Inspired Circuit 4x:

• 20 Seconds Burpees
• 10 Seconds rest
• 20 Seconds Kettlebell swings
• 10 Seconds rest

Main Circuit (for a little bit of everything else) 3-5x:

• 5x Double Kettlebell Combo (1x Clean, 1x Press, 1x Squat)
• 10x Heavy Kettlebell swings
• 5x 8-Count Bodybuilders* (grip break, basically)
• 20/20 Step Ups

Abs Combo:

• 30x Scissor Kicks
• 30x Crossreach Sit-ups
• 10x Sandbag bag-drags
• 20x Scissor Kicks
• 20x Crossreach Sit-ups
• 10x Sandbag bag-drags
• 10x Scissor Kicks
• 10x Crossreach Sit-ups
• 10x Sandbag bag-drags

*Thanks to Jen for asking about 8-Count Bodybuilders in the comments – here’s a short video about how to do them (the demo really starts at 1:30):