Recovery from pullup negatives

BrianD3

I did some heavy weighted one arm pullup negatives around 10 days ago and I think I haven't recovered from them yet. I'm not injured and don't have tendonitis but am still a little sore and my strength is down.

Am better than I was though. A couple of days after the negative session. I tried to do some pullups and had the worst DOMS I've ever experienced. Could barely do a two arm pullup with bodyweight let alone a one armer!

Anyone notice very long recovery times after doing heavy negative pullups or heavy negatives in other exercises. My experience makes me think that negatives are counterproductive.

brianthebard

Yes had pretty hard doms for a week or so after trying them for the first time. Rubadub often does negatives afaik, don't think they are counterproductive, just that it is easy to overload a negative and handle a lot more weight than you would be capable of doing for the full movement, hence the doms I guess. I imagine you did quite a few sets and took a long time to lower yourself?

rain on

Yeah I did a rake of negative chinups last Thursday and I was in ribbons till Monday, and I'm still a little stiff even now. I guess they seem easier so you do more reps and/or sets and wreck yourself. I'll know better next time anyway..

d'Oracle

I'm not sure doing a rake of negative on anything is a great idea.

DOMS is often associated with the negative (eccentric) portion of a movement. So doing loads will make you teh payeenz.

J-Fit

d'Oracle wrote: »

I'm not sure doing a rake of negative on anything is a great idea.

DOMS is often associated with the negative (eccentric) portion of a movement. So doing loads will make you teh payeenz.

What he said. Eccentrics are tough on the CNS. You can handle a lot more weight on the descent of a lift than the ascent. Excellent for strength development once you hit a plateau but not to be overused or overloaded.

J-Fit

d'Oracle wrote: »

I'm not sure doing a rake of negative on anything is a great idea.

Duplicate Post

Brian?

J-Fit wrote: »

What he said. Eccentrics are tough on the CNS. You can handle a lot more weight on the descent of a lift than the ascent. Excellent for strength development once you hit a plateau but not to be overused or overloaded.

I agree. I wouldn't do negatives on anything except isolation stuff like curls.

Doing negatives on any compound movement seems to be a killer for me.

Transform

agreed and many of my clients report the worst doms from when learning chin ups for the first time - 4-6reps of neg only for 4secs down then jump back up.

rain on

Yeah I'd never felt anything like it from exercise. Nothing like learning the hard way

BobbyOLeary

I got similar DOMS when I was first working towards strict muscleups. I used to do sets of 3 or 4 slow negatives (no weight attached but they were relatively heavy for me). I never got the same sort of pain from doing sets of muscleups once I could go from the bottom. Bit of tendonitis from overuse sometimes but never the same type of DOMS.

rubadub

BrianD3 wrote: »

10 days ago and I think I haven't recovered from them yet.

On weighted normal pullups I think the longest I had was 4 days, e.g. did them on a monday, ready to do them again on the saturday. I now do not go past my 1RM on negatives, even though I could, and have read sites advising to go well over.

d'Oracle wrote: »

DOMS is often associated with the negative (eccentric) portion of a movement.

I have heard that but am not certain exactly what it means. To me it means if I did 1 set of 10 chinups or 2 sets of 10 negative only chinups then I should have more DOMS from the negative only sets, I have moved the same weight the same distance, but more in the eccentric movement.

brianthebard wrote: »

it is easy to overload a negative and handle a lot more weight than you would be capable of doing for the full movement

This is what I think they might mean, or where the logic came from. I would not phrase that as negatives causing more DOMS, but negatives allowing you do far more work very easily, which in turn causes more DOMS.

I find negatives very easy to do, too easy, and thats the danger. If I am not feeling up to it or hungover etc I might do negatives since they are so easy to do and I know (not feel) I have worked the muscles the same amount. I think people like to go all out no matter what and have a "no pain no gain" mentality, so might go all out on negatives like they would normal ones, and so be in tatters the next day. This is why I actually think they are not more popular, they are too easy with no challenge, people feel they are not doing a "real workout", it can feel almost like cheating. If I am not going to train for several days I will do heavy negatives planning to be recovered in time for when I can train again.

Transform wrote: »

many of my clients report the worst doms from when learning chin ups for the first time

This does not surprise me, for many people it is the only time they are doing negative only reps past their 1RM, and I expect for complete beginners this is brutal on the body. I have never heard of beginners doing say negative only squats with more than their 1RM, I expect the DOMS from those would be FAR worse.

Here is Dorian Yates talking of negatives, I was doing them like this before I had read this
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KFY/is_4_20/ai_98464560/

Negative-only training is one of those misconceptions that I caution neophyte bodybuilders about; rather than trying to complete a negative-only set -- something I would never do -- I preach the efficacy of applying the negative-reps (or reverse-gravity) principle to extend a set past failure.

This is a study about negative only training.http://www.rpfit.com/pdf/Negative_Case_Study.pdf

Eight High School football players were selected for their work habits. All of the athletes were involved in weight training for at least on year....

The workouts were scheduled twice per week, Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Friday, for six weeks. Each workout consisted of one set of six different exercises, with two different workouts used....

The guide number of repetitions was eight on all exercises except chins and dips, where the guide number was six. Anytime the guide number was meet the weight was increased the next workout. For a repetition to be recorded, the weight had to be lowered in 8-10 seconds. A stopwatch with a verbal count was used. The set was terminated when the repetition was lowered in less than six seconds....

The overall strength gain for the eight athletes was 25.69%, while the average strength gain from the ‘traditional’ strength training classes I supervised in previous years ranged from 10-15%. However, it should be noted that the number of repetitions completed relative to the load in the pre- and post-tests were not identical (as weight increased, repetitions decreased), and the overall average gain of 25.69% may be a slight over-estimate....

The negative workouts averaged 11 minutes per session. From a time standpoint, negative workouts are a very attractive way to train.

Transform

rubadub wrote: »

On weighted normal pullups I think the longest I had was 4 days, e.g. did them on a monday, ready to do them again on the saturday. I now do not go past my 1RM on negatives, even though I could, and have read sites advising to go well over.


I have heard that but am not certain exactly what it means. To me it means if I did 1 set of 10 chinups or 2 sets of 10 negative only chinups then I should have more DOMS from the negative only sets, I have moved the same weight the same distance, but more in the eccentric movement.

This is what I think they might mean, or where the logic came from. I would not phrase that as negatives causing more DOMS, but negatives allowing you do far more work very easily, which in turn causes more DOMS.

I find negatives very easy to do, too easy, and thats the danger. If I am not feeling up to it or hungover etc I might do negatives since they are so easy to do and I know (not feel) I have worked the muscles the same amount. I think people like to go all out no matter what and have a "no pain no gain" mentality, so might go all out on negatives like they would normal ones, and so be in tatters the next day. This is why I actually think they are not more popular, they are too easy with no challenge, people feel they are not doing a "real workout", it can feel almost like cheating. If I am not going to train for several days I will do heavy negatives planning to be recovered in time for when I can train again.

This does not surprise me, for many people it is the only time they are doing negative only reps past their 1RM, and I expect for complete beginners this is brutal on the body. I have never heard of beginners doing say negative only squats with more than their 1RM, I expect the DOMS from those would be FAR worse.

Here is Dorian Yates talking of negatives, I was doing them like this before I had read this
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KFY/is_4_20/ai_98464560/


This is a study about negative only training.http://www.rpfit.com/pdf/Negative_Case_Study.pdf

yes i do plenty of inverted rows for a few months before doing neg only chins - plenty of my vids show clients doing this