Recon Ron/Ladders

[Michael Simpson]

I've been following this site for a few weeks and finally started the beginner's program on Monday. I thought I was in half-decent shape until I hung a pullup bar in my garage and embarrassed myself! Now that I've tried it a bit, I still have some newbie questions:

1) I hear a lot of mention of the Recon Ron pullup program. I searched the message boards and the internet for details, but all I could find were dead links. Does anyone know where I can find more information about this?

2) I hear people talk about the effectiveness of "ladder training". Again, where can I find out exactly what this means, and why it's better?

3) What's a good source to find out more information on the various Olympic lifts? I'm wondering what the correct form is, where I'm supposed to feel it, etc?

Thanks,
Mike

[Chris Siler]

Recon Ron- Essentially do a pyramid once a day for a week, then add some more reps to the same workout the next week, continue forever because it doesn't make a lot of sense. Just adding volume, set up for overtraining.
Ladder is a Pavel "naked warrior" thing. Get on bar and do 1 rep, drop, then 2, ect like a pyramid but stop 1 or 2 reps before you max out and start back up the "ladder". Could look like this 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,wouldn't be able to finish the set to 8 so-1,2,3,4,5 - 1,2,3 - 1,2, 1,2 ect. Good to spread throughout the day- do as much as possible, as fresh as possible. Great for peaking on a PT test or to just increase your max reps.

[Thom R Clark]

I followed Recon Rons pullup program to the letter and I maxed out the pullups with 20 dead hangs with ease. It built tremendous UBS and is a guarantee if you do it to the T. I completed all 5 reps in less than 10 minutes and I was ripped in weeks. TC, MSgt, USMC (Ret)

[Bryan Veis]

I followed the Recon Ron program for several months -- I got up to doing 15 deadhangs in the first set (of five). The protocol works. (It's not a pyramid, by the way; it could be described as a half pyramid if you want to classify it -- the highest number of reps comes in the first set and they decrease in the following sets.)

There is no question that one could follow the program ad infinitum adding more and more pullups. As I recall, the version I saw was 38weeks long and got to 31 pullups in the first set. There is also a shorter version floating around the internet. Here's a WFS link to the longer version: http://webpages.charter.net/bert/reconron.html

Overtraining, though, Chris? I seem to recall a serious challenge to reach 50 pullups in one set on this message board a year or two ago and that several posters reached that goal. It all depends on what you want and using common sense to get there.