Well it’s been some time now, and I thought I would share with you a fantastic little exercise tool I am completely in love with that can help have epic workouts. It’s really not a tool and more like a form of training.
The other week I saw this great YouTube video on pull ups using pyramid training, here is the video on Calisthenics Kingz:
It’s essentially a workout descending pyramid, starting with the maximum reps and counting down from each rep as the total number of sets, while resting between sets.
For example if you can do 10 reps doing pull ups, then that is your starting point and you count down from there:
| Set | Reps |
|---|---|
| 1 | 10 |
| 2 | 9 |
| 3 | 8 |
| 4 | 7 |
| 5 | 6 |
| 6 | 5 |
| 7 | 4 |
| 8 | 3 |
| 9 | 2 |
| 10 | 1 |
What I love about this is that if you are maxed out at a certain rep range of any particular exercise you can push past that and get more reps.
For example, let’s say you can only do 5 pull ups, well by incorporating this training into your workout you can twice or three times the amount of reps. It’s using rest and super setting all in one.
With 5 maximum reps on the pull ups you
| Set | Reps |
|---|---|
| 1 | 5 |
| 2 | 4 |
| 3 | 3 |
| 4 | 2 |
| 5 | 1 |
| Total | 15 |
You have effectively tripled your reps, of course you are resting but only for a short period of time, maybe resting for 30 seconds to 45 seconds. If you need longer that’s okay. You are super setting and getting more bang for your buck.
I definitely feel it since I started doing this.
It’s amazing how you can just really focus on one particular exercise and get the most out of it.
I realize there are those that will argue quality over quantity and I agree.
I also believe you can accomplish both quantity and quality and that the two are not mutually exclusive from one another.
You can incorporate both. When I practice I simply take my time and focus on each rep as if it were my last. The numbers will take care of themselves.
And in the end with this type of training I am unknowingly blowing my personal bests out of the water.
Training using pyramids can be done in ascending or descending order. You can start instead with the lowest number and work your way up to a max rep target.
And best of all it can be applied to just about every area of your physical training from push ups to abs. The other day I finished my ab workout doing flutter kicks with a max rep count using pyramids from 20 reps and counting down to 1, and finished with 210 reps.
How great is that?
