It has been a goal of mine for a while to get the one arm chin up. Since the OAC movement itself is extremely stressful on the elbow and shoulder joints, it is a good idea to develop the necessary maximal strength first. Through much of the research I’ve done, a good rule of thumb is to reach a weighted pullup single rep max of 70% of your bodyweight. This indicates that you have built up and possess enough strength to execute the OAC.
In my case, I weigh 170 pounds, so 70% is 119 pounds. Needless to say, when I decided to pursue the OAC, I also knew that a secondary goal of pulling up with an added weight of 120 pounds came with it. This afternoon, before sparring, I thought I would test my progress from my last max two months ago of 115 pounds.
I did a couple of warmup sets and then decided to go for 125 pounds due to the fact that the plates were easier to arrange. I’m OCD and I hate using 5 and 10 pound plates doing weighted pullups. They just irritate me because they take up valuable room on my belt and don’t offer a lot of resistance in return. But using two 45 pound plates and a 35 pound plate would equal 125 pounds, which was close, but just beyond my goal and didn’t violate my logical mind’s rules against the small plates.
Lazy and strange? Yes. But, I’m an engineer and that’s how we think.
With my weight belt properly loaded, I took a shot at my new max. It wasn’t the prettiest pullup in the world, but I got my chin over the bar with an added weight of 125 pounds (73.5 % BW).
From this point forward, I will shift gears from gaining maximal strength to gaining better balance and control on the bar using only one arm. My OAC negatives are feeling good, so my goal should be reached pretty soon!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs3SJWDDrfU&feature=youtube_gdata_player
