One of my goals over the next few months is to be able to complete a few tuck planche pushups. This will be quite a feat seeing as I have never attempted a planche before. Such an exercise requires a massive strength-to-weight ratio and a fair bit of coordination (at least for a beginner like me). After contemplating the best strategy for progressing towards this goal, I thought back to the massive frequency-volume training approach I successfully used last year to improve my chin-up strength. I decided to share a few words on what I learnt about this approach to training and to help anyone decide whether this style of training may help them off a plateau.

Frequency and Volume
Last year at one point I got so fed up with not being able to do more than 6 weak chin-ups (admittedly I was a good 10kg heavier than I am now). A good friend of mine (he is one hell of a unit!) suggested to just go crazy with them. Do a hundred a day. Spread them out into sets a couple less than your max, and do them around each meal time. I ended up starting with 3 sets of 5 chin-ups, 6 times a day, a total of around 90 chin-ups, six days a week. Sure I was fatigued as heck after the first day but oddly enough you get a kind of ‘second wind’ with them and you can just keep pumping out set after set, day after day, even though you want to cry. After around a month and a half, my max got bumped up to around 15 comfortable chin-ups, but minus that feeling of dread and ‘cant-be-bothered-ness’ whenever it was time to start a set. I could just push them out smooth and controlled. I was owning them! I could have kept going with the program but I felt good enough already for getting out of that rut, so I moved on to other things.

Conditioning
I believe conditioning was the key to the success of the massive frequency and volume program for the chin-ups that worked for me. My body became ‘accustomed’ to performing chin-ups. A lot of people tend to overlook the exercise specific nature of strength and fitness. An Olympic swimmer may make a hopeless runner, and vice versa, even though they both have excellent cardiovascular fitness. Just because you have insanely strong biceps and lats and don’t weight much, doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do half a dozen chin-ups. You need to practice them and let your body become conditioned to the particular exercise, just as if you’re improving your coordination for hitting a ball.

Coordination
One reason conditioning is so important for many exercises is that coordination and technique pays a surprisingly big role in how strong you are in the exercise. You can’t just hang on and muscle your way through it. Small variations in hand position, or swinging whatever it is you’re holding or hanging onto, can make the world of difference. If you haven’t got the coordination on the bench press, for example, you’ll be swinging the bar all over the gym and wasting extra strength to stabilize it. This is at least 10 times more significant in something like chin-ups, or planches.

Mental Conditioning
The bottom line is the mind will always play a bigger role in our training than we’ll ever give it credit for (even if we try to). This is a fact you’ll have to contemplate for yourself. This frequency/volume training, however, may be providing a way around this. The massive number of times you perform an exercise is training the mind to not think twice about it. You’re flooding your body and mind with so many repetitions of the exercise that there is no time to think about it. Essentially you’re saying to yourself “shut the hell up and train!” So eventually, each training session your subconscious mind is telling you “another day in the office. I know what to do.” The result is less subconscious negative chatter trying to convince your body that it would rather be down at the pub instead.

Shock Value
Finally, maybe your training has become too ordinary. It may be your program, your selection of exercises, your way of performing them, etc. Training is all about adaptation. You increase the intensity and your body adapts by getting stronger or bigger. Some times it seems no matter what you vary or increase, you just don’t get any where, in general or with a specific troublesome exercise or goal. The high volume and frequency may provide a massive shock to your body to kick it back into gear. Although if this is the reason why this strategy works, then you may find (like everything of course!) it’s not the be-all and end-all after your body has become too accustomed.

How and When to use this strategy
The high volume and frequency will tax your whole body after a while. Your energy will start draining. I believe such a strategy is best implemented when you are working towards a single specific goal and don’t have much else planned in the way of other training. It will probably benefit you the most when you’ve identified a plateau that you just cant seem to get off, that way you’ll definitely see the result (good or bad), and you wont have wasted your time in the case that regular training might have also lead to gains. If you are already in a balanced training program, assess whether it’s possible to limit the volume of that program for a certain period whilst you attempt to break through this plateau.

Now I know chin-ups are a very different exercise to something like bench presses (maybe one day I’ll test how the principle works there!). I expect the exercises that require the greatest amount of coordination will be those best suited to this form of training. Just note that there are many exercises that require a lot more skill and coordination than we realize. Bodyweight exercises tend to be well suited naturally, even the regular pushups.

Naturally, (as you should already be doing) you should keep your diet regular and full of nutritious food and energy. Unless your body weight is a critical issue, err on the side of eating more. Too little food and you’ll burn out in no time.

As a final word, everyone is different. What may work for 99% of the world might not work for you. What might work for you, might not work for 99% of the world. Experiment. Find what works for you whilst training safely and enjoying the challenge!