The All Day Workout

My friends and I once had a month long pull up contest to see who could accumulate the most reps in the month.

It quickly got competitive.

It was clear that doing pull ups throughout an hour long gym session wasn’t going to get you the win.

We all got doorway pull up bars and started doing reps whenever we could get a chance.

After a couple weeks of doing frequent, sub maximum effort sets, I noticed a couple things.

We could get a ton of training in without it feeling like a workout. And, we could still get a regular workout in if we wanted since we didn't need to use our training time for only pull ups.

Not only that, but once a week or so when I would test my max reps in a row, it always got better.

Since then, I've become a big fan of "all day" workouts.

Things like pull ups, bodyweight squats, push ups, and pretty much anything with a kettlebell are perfect for this. Legendary strength coach, Pavel, calls this greasing the groove. Many sets of sub maximal reps to avoid failure and hone in the skill of the movement.

While it doesn't feel like a big stimulus while you're doing it, it's easy to accumulate big reps and get a huge adaptation.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain