A few weeks ago I noticed my friends Hunter Cook and Jen Comas Keck posting videos on Instagram of themselves doing various fun feats of strength and challenging the other to attempt what they had just done. It looked like they were having fun, I liked the photos, and didn’t give it  much more thought.

Then a couple days ago my training partner and colleague Mark chimed in and asked, “Are these challenges open to anyone?”

Mark is one strong S.O.B. so I decided that if he was going to throw his hat into the ring I would  beat him to it. At the moment, the challenges involved rope pull-ups, so I laid my cards on the table with this:

Since that moment, this little challenge has absolutely EXPLODED. As of this moment there are over 40 videos on Instagram with the tag #instabattle2014 and Facebook is littered with the posts as well. You can see all of the tagged entries (Hunter went back and tagged the ones that pre-dated having a hashtag for it) by searching on Instagram for #instabattle2014.

The general idea is that someone posts a video of a challenging feat of strength, and you seek to one-up it in some way. It might be more weight, or it might be a variation like today I riffed on Jessi Kneeland’s very impressive barbell Sots press with a one-arm bottoms-up Sots press. Not least because I don’t have the mobility to do a barbell Sots press. Everyone has been incredibly encouraging and respectful of others, often reiterating that you should just try it before saying “I can’t do that.” I have to say it pairs pretty well with Jen’s post about the question “Can I do that?” 

There’s no one keeping score, there’s no governing body. Just people having fun training “together”, separately.

I’ve said this on Facebook but I want to reiterate it here .The camaraderie that has emerged is a perfect representation of physical culture and what it should be about. Using your body for one of the things it is best suited to doing: playing and being physically active. Coming up with new ways to challenge and push the limits is the best part of having training partners. I often miss training with Adam T. Glass in part because he had such a knack for coming up with creative changes to make things more challenging to constantly drive our strength forward. I made almost unbelievable progress during that time with the questions he’d ask that usually started with “Can you…”

My challenge to you is: Can you join in?

If I love deadlifts, and I do, then pull-ups are like the awkward third wheel that comes along for the ride but no one ever talks about. I’ve often joked that you could characterize my training as deadlifts and pull-ups.

But I digress. The purpose of this article is to give you an example of how doing “less” can often lead to doing “more”.

If you worked your way up from not being able to do a pull-up at all, you may have used bands or a pull-up station to de-load the movement along the way. Once you got past the point of being able to do bodyweight pull-ups, it’s unlikely that you ever gave another look at the bands.

A quick story. For several years I really enjoyed competing in the Tactical Strength Challenge. For those unfamiliar, it is a worldwide informal competition held in the spring and fall of every year. Any gym can participate and the results are posted online. The events are a 1-rep max deadlift, as many pull-ups as you can in 1 set, and a 5-minute kettlbell snatch test (24kg men, 16kg women).

For several competitions (so figure spanning at least a year and a half) I was unable to budge my pull-up score from 17. Despite my maximum strength consistently rising, and my maximum pull-up strength nearing +100 pounds I wasn’t able to budge my max-reps score.

Until I changed my training. 

Instead of getting better at pulling more weight, I thought maybe I should get better at doing more reps. Specificity. How was I going to do more reps? By making it easier. I deloaded it. The next contest I did 23 reps.

Since then I have used this technique with countless clients and it always goes the same way. The first workout they always do the same number of  reps as they could do without the band. Then the next workout there is a rep or two bump, and so on  for the next few workouts until they need a change of direction.

If you’ve long since discarded the resistance bands or pull-up station it might be worth reconsidering. Of course, this example is about pull-ups but there are two bigger ideas to keep in mind:

1. Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands. You adapt to exactly what you do including how you do it. If you’re always going heavy and doing fewer reps, it’s going to impact your ability to do many reps.
2. Do less. Make it easier. Heavier and harder is only one direction to make progress in, but neglecting the opposite direction will leave you stuck and frustrated.

 And let me know when you double your max pull-ups.

 

Lifting straps are fantastic. Like belts they’re a tool that used properly will allow you to lift more weight and get more out of your training than you could otherwise. Used improperly – well not so much.

Something you’ll hear often from people who don’t even lift (or very much) is that straps will make you weaker in the long run or that you’re only as strong as your weakest link, and straps will cause that to be your grip. While it’s true that you can only lift what you can hold on to, there are a lot of qualifiers to that statement so let’s look at it like this.

Straps are to barbells as belts are to pulling heavy as tacky is to stones. All of those pieces of equipment allow you to lift heavier weight than you would be able to without them. But, how does that make you stronger?

If you can only deadlift 5 reps with 400lbs before your grip goes out, but are able to deadlift 10 reps with straps you are able to place your entire posterior chain under double the stress than you would be able to otherwise.

If you can only lift a 220lb Atlas stone without tacky, but you can lift a 270lb stone with tacky you are able to add 50lbs to the amount of stress your arms, back, glutes and entire body for that matter is placed under. More weight makes you stronger.

In both of these cases, provided you’re doing some other specific exercises to improve your grip strength you will come back to the lighter weights with an overall stronger body.

If you still don’t understand how straps can make you stronger, not weaker, I have lost interest in trying to convince you.

Here is a good technique for actually using the straps that should ensure that it never slips off your implement.