Topic Author's Original Post - May 11, 2010 - 04:40pm PT
I read that Alex Lowe often did 400 pullups every day. I also read that I should rest 48 to 72 hours after a workout where I work to failure. Maybe Alex got away with it cause he didn't work to failure? I'd like to be able to do more pullups so I would look like a bad ass and also be able to climb 5.15. Anybody have any ideas on how I could get to a point of doing a bunch of pullups without causing problems. I know I should also work opposing muscles, which I will. Just wanted to see if there are any climbers out there that do pullups every day and how many, how often, work to failure in each rep, how many reps do you do to failure, any issues etc?
opposing muscles are good. Rock rings are easier on the joints than a fixed bar, but basically you are going to need real good genes to keep up with Lowe or Climb 5.15.
hi john i've not seen you in ages.
love to share some time with you, hopefully soon.
at the base of the mountain alex would lean into the first moves of his route. The mountain, when seeing the look within his eyes, and the might within his soul, would simply crawl away.
thus the pursuit became alex's, and his aspirations flourished.
i've no explanation for the avalanche that took alex from our world.
whenever i find myself at the playground with my lassies,
after i work all of the under-slide boulder problems,
and then change my diaper,
i begin reps of pull ups on the monkey bars.
all the moms are peeping, i know. i cando 12 good cleans ones in a rep, a few times per sesh.
my 6 year old daughter can already haul her asse up thru one pullup!
im quite amazed but im within, arrogant and snooty.
that's why i believe all the mom's are gawkin' at me?
but really they're not. they're believing their own story, not mine. and not alexs'. for how else do you navigate this spread without dreams within?
good for alex. 400 pullups and a life well-travelled.
i strive for a song similar to his.
If you do them in sets of ten, it wouldn't take that long. I did 100 while I cooked dinner last night. I couldn't do 400, I don't think, but maybe it's not that unreasonable.
They do get easier the more you do, over the long term that is.
Alex grew a horrendous protuberance on his elbow from overdoing it. Jenni was completely unimpressed.
And never mind the pullups, the stuff he'd do any given day before he went to work at 08:00 was mind boggling.
This may be a "legend" but I remember hearing that Alex Lowe took part in a study analyzing the red blood cell count of high end alpinists and climbers. I guess he had an average that was several times what normal people have. Quite simply, it took a lot more for him to get tired than it would you or I.
I'd be willing to bet that high end sport climbers have similar genetic mutations. Or, perhaps their bodies flush lactic acid much faster than ours?
I climbed with him in Bozeman when I used to live there. That guy did more laps up ice in Hyalite in one morning before 0800 than I did in a week of hard climbing.
I remember the first time I met him or rather encountered him. I was on my way up to the Grand Teton and got passed by him around the split for either Garnet Canyon or Disappointment Peak. As I was getting up to the Lower Saddle, he was on his way back after already soloing the Direct Exum and coming back down from the Upper Saddle (OS route). He was running uphill faster than I can sprint a 100m. It was mind boggling.
He did have his VO2 max measured at one point and it was near the top end of anything that had ever been recorded. He was about on par with Olympic cross country skiers and Lance Armstrong and way above just about any marathon runner.
I've heard the rumors about 400 pull-ups a day but from what I saw of him, most of his training was in the mountains: running, skate skiing, climbing.
I miss him and his contagious laughter. He always had a smile and was always very unassuming. I think about him every time I'm back in Bozeman and pass his house.
I would consult the cross fit website and eric horsts website. I would strongly suggest getting a good personal trainer for a 1:1 session who can accurately assess your fitness strengths and weaknesses and how to approach your goals.
We climb with the whole body. Assessment of your weakest component and addressing that component will most quickly translate to a jump in your ability to climb better.
If you have weaknesses in balance and flexibility a small gain in balance and flexibility will help much more than pull ups.
If you cannot do a one legged squat, you certainly would benefit from an increase in leg strength.
We climb with the whole body. Any good supplemental fitness program will address all the components. Power and strength in grip, pull up, lock off, etc are all of course critical but we have much better information available to prevent overuse injury than previous generations.
Good Luck!
Coondog
Check out the 20 Pull-Up Challenge - http://twentypullups.com/. There is also a 100 Push-Up Challenge site. It would be fun to say you can do 20 pullups, but how well that one excercise translates to improved climbing is probably pretty limited...
Use rings and avoid full extension of the arms; arms on a bar and complete straightening cause stress on joints and ligaments.
Better to take an easy climb at the climbing gym; then add weight a little bit a time, and keep repeating the route, gradually adding more weight. It's like, doing 5.10 moves with a certain amount of extra weight = 5.11. Not exactly, but to some extent it is a valid principle. Bachar once said on a video, words to the effect that, "Yah, did all those pull ups, but not sure how much good it really did."
I've always wondered how good chimps and gorillas would be at climbing if you could train them to do the moves.
Maybe in the future, they will genetically engineer people to have better climbing skills.
People who undergo Max VO2 test rarely max out (when they endure the test until their bodies switch from aerobic to anaerobic metabolism) that is their tolerance for the pain or muscles fail before they peak in 02 uptake.
To max you must continue the exercise beyond the point where 02 uptake plateaus even if the exercise intensity increases. It is rare for someone to reach the plateau. Once someone does peak they will either continue momentarily and resign or pass out.
If Alex Lowe's max VO2 was in the 60 ml range he was not near the top of the heap as far as recorded max VO2's which have been as high as 88ml (superhuman). I think Lance Armstrong has maxed out at 85 ml/Kg/min.
(Not trying to take anything from Alex Lowe just clarifying record max VO2's)
When I first hung out with Alex and Jenni in the Valley in 81 (ish) they were hanging out with a mild mannered, bespectacled guy from Montana and his name was Bill. He was anything but wild and maybe that's why the name stuck. I just remember him as a real nice guy. It's been almost thirty years and I never saw him again.
Well that just shot that out of the ball park... My Bill was only a tot when you met your gentleman.
Plus for good or ill, my Bill is not what I can call mild mannered. He can be very professional at work but in his private life "mild" is not a word that describes him.
Spend your time doing tons of pullups and you'll be a really strong 5.10 climber---if you can climb 5.10. If you want to climb 5.15, an entirely different training routine would be called for.
he and his partners were stuck in their tents during a white-out; the ever-moving alex pulled on his boots to get some air...an hour later, his friends got worried and went looking for him
alex had dug a pit about 5 feet deep, had his skis lying across the top, and was in the pit doing pull-ups
i always thought his 400/day were just to pass the time and not a work out routine
If Alex Lowe's max VO2 was in the 60 ml range he was not near the top of the heap as far as recorded max VO2's which have been as high as 88ml (superhuman). I think Lance Armstrong has maxed out at 85 ml/Kg/min.
(Not trying to take anything from Alex Lowe just clarifying record max VO2's)
I'd be surprised if Alex's V02 wasn't higher, given the way he used to just blow everyone away with his capabilities at altitude. Maybe that ability just translated to something other than V02 somehow.
Lance's V02 was never that high, a subject that cause lots of the doping discussions regarding his abilities. Greg LeMond's VO2 max was measured at 92.5.
You are as strong as your weakest link. There's a good book by Heather Sagar (sp?) which has a set of tests in it to help you figure out your weaknesses & strengths. You then train your weaknesses.
Most climbers, who are overwhelmingly not coached, tend to overtrain their strengths: Head weak? Avoid slabs. Core *and* head weak? Avoid off-widths. Fingers and endurance weak? Avoid sport climbs. The wrong-- and easy-- way to go.
In other disciplines, coaches observe and test, and adjust training so that the weakest part of performance improves. An objective set of eyes other than yourself can give you very useful feedback.
IMHO pullups are nice but far from essential-- hand and crimp strength, endurance, and bomber footwork are FAR more important. After all, watch Chris Sharma or whoever climbing 5.15: yeah, there will be the occasional epic pull-up move, but there will be much more hard crimping, etc.
You missed my point.
Most people, when being tested can't reach their max VO2 threshold when being tested due to the onset of fatigue (oxygen debt & lactic acid build-up).
Any max V02 above mid 60's, is in terms of physical work, is high and way above what the average "Joe" is capable of.
Lance Armstrong and other world class athletes were in the mid 80's; which in terms of human physiology is "superhuman". The XCC skiers you listed are off the charts when compared to "Joe". Mentioning Lance Armstrong in my original comment was to illustrate a V02 max with a household name.
Furthermore, VO2 max is only one peramater of an athlete's ability to perform at record setting levels. Armstrong's "low" V02 is not proof of doping, more of an indicator of other astounding physiological traits. Doping would give him an edge but wouldn't make the man.
If you want a better understanding of exercise physiology, see
Textbook of Work Physiology by Astrand & Rodahl.
Some friends were on K2 with Alex and everyone had to do an identical load carry up this slope. Alex left last, had a double load, and was the first to reach the dump then passed everyone else on the way down.
No one else has the Alex gene
Saw Ed Viesters on TV the other day, it's not just VO2 max but anareobic thresholds which play a major role in endurance
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/11/1122_041122_ed_viesturs_2.html Only world-class endurance athletes such as cyclist Lance Armstrong have a higher VO2 max than Viesturs, Schoene said. Viesturs also has an anaerobic threshold of about 90 percent, meaning he can climb for hours on end using 90 percent of his maximum exercise capacity without collapsing. Most people collapse at levels around 60 percent.But more than this physiology, Schoene said, Viesturs moves with incredible efficiency
"I do really well with less oxygen," he said. "I've gone to the top of Everest without oxygen and sat on top for an hour and had lunch. I was not crawling on my hands and knees." - Ed V.
Alex Lowe was an amazing athlete, but I read in Mountain Magazine, in the 80s, where Tony Yaniro would do 1,000 pull ups a day as part of his training regimen. Yaniro caught a lot of flack about training like a fiend, when no one else trained, but it obviously paid off (ie. Grand Illusion, the Pirate).
When Alex visited here in the Gunks in the early 80's, he didn't appear to ever train. He climbed, graciously, hard, boldly and always with a smile. A fine person.
Just to put some of these numbers in perspective though, a current record for total pull-ups in a day is 3355. Accomplished in less than 16 hours this last May.
I can't see the appeal of doing so many pull-ups. Never did more than about 25 at one time; saw no correlation with either gymnastics or climbing. But people do get attracted to very unusual challenges, so go for it, I guess.
Bachar describes somewhere, quite possibly on this site, doing large numbers of pullups, realizing that they were not particularly relevant to his goals, and so changing his routine to emphasize strength more than muscular endurance. And yes, there is quite a difference. For example, I once encountered a guy who could do 100 two-arm pullups but not a single one-arm pullup.
High rep pullups, or high daily maximums, might yet be relevant to very long free walls and enchainments, where less than body weight pulling goes on for many hours.
Today, the 24th of December 2010, would have been Alex's 52nd birthday. We have a special day of remembrance for him. Jenni is loving her art, Max is an expert skier and keen photographer, Sam is starting at Montana State in the film program and has a fiendish work ethic and Isaac is mr junior scientist. You would be proud.
We visited Black magic, one of your favorite mixed routes yesterday and thought of your vision for ice climbing and willingness to push the limits.
Pull ups aside, your true measure was the friendliness and happiness that permeated everything you did.
"If you want a better understanding of exercise physiology, see
Textbook of Work Physiology by Astrand & Rodahl."
Very interesting. This work was copyrighted in 1970. I picked my copy up off a sidewalk here around 2004. Browsed through it a few times. Some pretty interesting stuff.
Aspendougy is on target about not hanging at full extension. Two or three days of that and you will have dislocating shoulders.
Secretariat during a physiological exam after death at 19 had a perfectly healthy heart 2.5 times the size of a normal race-horse's. The Lance Armstrong of the equine world.
Got to spend a fair amount of time with Alex Lowe when he would come to anchorage for various climbs. Couple or so obeservations.
Like everyone says he was an absolutely pleasant person to talk to. Glad to tell stories and answer questions.
As I got to know him a little some things stood out to me. Not only was he a very highly skilled climber and mountaineer in all skill and knowledge areas. The man was willing to take pretty extreme risks. Far more than i would ever choose to take regardless my mediocre skill levels.
He was well aware of the risks and he seemed ok with the very possible outcome.
He loved caffeine!!
I was asking him about the possibility of skiing various Everest routes. He mentioned that some seemed reasonable but the altitude would be the main problem. Skiing 50deg slopes wasn't too big a deal but passing out after a turn might be deadly.
So I asked him if he could do it.. being a renowned performer at altidude and most certainly an excellent skiier. He said he wouldn't because he had passed out on the summit ridge without Os. I was a bit shocked.. didn't know that everest had pushed even him that hard.
So maybe Veisters has even better genes or maybe Alex was just having one of those bad days at altitude that particular trip. Dunno..
I saw an interesting example of the utility of strength on top of technique in a bouldering video a year or two ago. (Sorry, it was in the gym, I have no idea what the name of the video is.)
In this video, Sharma and Graham were trying an obviously fierce roof boulder problem that required the feet to cut loose at one point. Sharma could do it; Graham could not. The difference was that Sharma could lock off on one arm and hold it locked as his body swung out, whereas Graham could not, his arm straightened, making his body a longer pendulum, the extra length being enough to throw him off the holds at the end of his swing.
The critical difference for this move was one-arm lock-off ability. But I did wonder whether Graham could have compensated by tucking hard when his feet cut loose, in which case one might say that technique compensated for "weakness." No way to know, since he didn't try that on camera.
Secretariat during a physiological exam after death at 19 had a perfectly healthy heart 2.5 times the size of a normal race-horse's. The Lance Armstrong of the equine world.
I knew Alex and Jennifer ,was lucky enough to work with both for two different seismograph companies, two of the nicest people you could ever meet. Last time I seen them, was in Rifle CO, where they took me to the hospital in the middle of the night, had to get my knee drained. I miss them and the glory days of portable seismograph. His memory will always be cherished. Hello Jennifer if you read this. Tim and I are doing good,working as electrical inspectors in the oil and gas industry. All the oil and gas we found is paying us again. Alex was one of the best people I have ever met,
RIP my friend.
Forget that! Do as many as you can, taking three seconds going up, hold one second, then three seconds going down for the burn, better for climbing power!
Back in 1977 I built up quickly do be able to do a sustainable 1,000 pullups in an 11 hour period. I would do ten and then walk around a small field and then do ten more and ten more...... I did the same thing before a 1975 attempt. On the climb I was indefatigable. On the first day, after 2 or 3 fixed pitches, I went all the way to the ledge on the 11th pitch. I could also do one-arm chins, but hadn't bothered with them for awhile, I wanted endurance to see me through.
Do as many as you can, taking three seconds going up, hold one second, then three seconds going down for the burn, better for climbing power!
I like this idea! I recently started doing pullups for the first time in 7 years. At the moment I can do 8. I am focusing on doing them slowly with good form, and going ALL THE WAY DOWN with arms straight before slowly doing the next rep. None of that herky-jerky pseudo-pullup CrossFit nonsense.
Wow, Hardman, that vid is amazing. What a dopey thing to do. But I've read that it's not good to fully extend for pull-ups. I now go most of the way but keep a slight bend. I've never hit the magic 20, but mid--upper teens is usually doable. Thoughts?
Hmmm. That what's hard about qualifying what a "rep" is. It's much easier to do one when the arm is knott straight (knott to mention jerking like a fish out of water like the CrossFit kooks).
I can easily bang out 10-12 if I only straighten my arms to a 20-30º angle, but that feels like cheating. Where do you draw the line?
Anyone else here remember the Marine from the first Survival of the Fittest competition that was so good at pullups that they had to him to stop once he had easily blown by everyone else and didn't appear to be laboring at all?
long ago after hearing of yaniro's 1000 pullup sets altman and i decided to go for it. can't really remember the details but it was something like 3-4 hours. think we started with individual sets of 50 working down to sets of 1. at the end I was left with such bad tendonitis in an elbow I was out of it for weeks, not hardly worth it. another climber from back then known to do a few pullups was pat t. I remember the custom pullup bar he always traveled with.
I used to do 1,000 pull-ups a day, with a 10-pound backpack. Real climber's pull-ups.
Ten sets of ten, 10 times a day.
I never got very strong. That's when I realized that genetics makes a huge difference in your athletic performance regardless of how much you train.
I used to watch Barry Bates do one-handed pull-ups, and so I trained hard with the hope of doing one-handed pull-ups with Barry. But I never even came close to one-handed pull-ups.
I'm astounded to hear of these feats of 1,000+ pull-ups a day. I can't imagine doing that, or wanting to do that if I were young. At 82 I have severe shoulder arthritis and degenerative spinal problems, but I still exercise modestly. I suppose were I to start again as a youngster I would not work the still rings. Doing the various cross moves and the like initiates shoulder problems that progress through life. On the other hand, I was doing one arm pull-ups on fingertips fifty years ago and my hands and fingers are a little stiff these days, but fine.
However, my spinal problems arose largely from jumping off boulders, even though I rarely jumped off more that two feet above the ground. When I see boulderers nowadays jumping from 15+ feet, even onto mats, I shudder. Gymnasts have used mats forever and they still suffer back problems.
Strongest I ever got was from lots of bouldering (duh) and rope climbing cuz that's what I heard John Gill did!
The best way to do the rope climbing was long slow reaches as far apart as you could make them - no feet. Made your lock off and hands really strong.
Ring dips are really great, too, but the key there is low and controlled so you don't tear up your shoulders - quality over quantity.
Never got into the huge amount of pullups and am definitely impressed!
A cautionary tale from Mr. Gill, too. Was never into highballs unless I was sure to not fall - I like my body to be my friend. What's wrong with top roping? Oh yeah, it's not cool. Between cool or my back working right, I'll take my back.
While hundreds of push ups per day is impressive, I'm with others...seems a recipe for shoulder/elbow problems.
And if it's power you're after, there are better ways. Campus board or Bachar ladder.
Also with Gill on the jumping off thing. I did too much of that, and am certainly thinking it may come back to haunt me.
While hundreds of push ups per day is impressive, I'm with others...seems a recipe for shoulder/elbow problems.
It's all genetics. I did 1,000 pull-ups a day, and never had any shoulder problems from that, or climbing.
On the other hand.... I got into running trail ultras and ruined my knees. I'm crippled now. The ultra crowd will also tell you that it's all genetics.
Genetics. Find what you're good at, and stick with it.
Let us know!