Pull Your Own Weight with GTG

10/29/08 Posted in Kettlebell Crazy  |  0 Comments

I was a teenage P.E. failure.

In my sophomore year in high school, I could barely manage 4 1/2 pullups.  It put me in the low group, with all the fatties and flabbies, who seemed to break a sweat just wearing their t-shirts, gym shorts and sneakers.

But I was not to be deterred.  Every day at fourth period found me laboring at the pullup bar, or going back and forth on the horizontal ladder.  My practice extended to my evening hours at home, where my dad had lashed a ladder to the rafters in the garage.  By year’s end, my persistence was rewarded, as I doubled, and later tripled, my original number of reps.

Of course, I was still dodging pop flies in right field, much to the fury of the jocks who were now stuck with me.  But I was in shape!

I didn’t know it then, but what I was doing was a thing called “synaptic facilitation”, or more popularly termed, “greasing the groove”  (GTG).  Simply put, it’s habituating your muscles and neural synapses to a particular type of activity.  

Take for example Zak Maxwell.

Zak is the son of senior RKC and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu champion Steve Maxwell.  At the tender age of twelve years, young Zak distinguished himself by doing 16 pull-ups in a 7th grade fitness test.  (His nearest competition squeaked out a measly 6 reps, which doesn’t speak well for the state of fitness in our schools today)

The remarkable thing about Zak’s training–if you could call it that–is that he hadn’t been doing pull-ups much at all. 

The Maxwell’s abode was a split-level house with an open floor plan, which they’d chosen to keep an eye on the kids from practically any vantage point.  It was also great for climbing:  while the rest of the family used the stairs to get from one floor to the other, Zak would opt for pulling himself up a 6-foot living room half-wall, jumping his grip 2 more feet up to the railing and pulling himself up again over the railing and into the dining area.  In essence, he was doing two very difficult pull-ups because of the friction of his body dragging on the wall and the lack of gripping purchase on the wall and railing.  Multiply this process by the amount of times a normal kid goes to the refrigerator, and you’ll see Zak was unconsciously employing the GTG technique.

To get to the third floor bathroom, Zak would climb an 18′ rope (as if you hadn’t guessed by now, the Maxwells are not like the rest of us), without his legs to the balcony from the dining room foyer–it took him 14 to 15 mini pulls to get to the top. 

So although he rarely did actual pull-ups, he came off like a superhero to his classmates, as he did those 16 pull-ups.

But for those of us, mere mortals, inhabiting single-storey quarters, a doorway-mounted chin-up bar will do nicely. 

For myself, I’ve taken to knocking off five pull-ups whenever I pass the Door Gym  that hangs in our bedroom hallway .  Over the course of a day, I can do as few as 40-45 reps, total, or even as many as 100–all without tiring myself, or training to failure.  If I go all out, I can do about 10 pull-ups at once.  But with the high sets/low reps scheme, I’ve been told it’s possible to work up to half again or even twice that many at the end of a month or so.  

In the meantime, it’s provided other benefits.  It’s stretched out my spine, and made it more limber, less stiff–pull-ups are also a great exercise for the lats, which give you that V-taper, and a nice slimming appearance to your waist.  It also may be working the abs:  as my main pulling muscles have gotten stronger, I’ve noticed more muscles in my lower back and mid-section firing up as well.  As a result, my posture has improved.  I stand a bit taller than I might have before–which is a real plus the closer I get to age 60.  

And, although I don’t have a climbing rope in my dining room–or, for that matter, a balcony to climb up to–I’m still pretty good at shinnying up that pole at our local playground’s jungle gym–”Go, Grandpa!”