Brothers Brendan and Cam Jones of YouTube’s Goal Guys are all about doing fitness challenges to push themselves to improve within set periods. For one project, they worked 60 days to increase their vertical jumps by more than 4 inches. And in another, they took 30 days to work solely on increasing their grip strength. For their latest attempt, Brendan uses a weighted vest pullup challenge to work on improving his upper body strength.
To do so, he purchased a weighted vest that can hold up to 45 pounds to provide an extra challenge to his bodyweight training. “My goal is to see how much I can improve my upper body strength with weighted vest training. And to add some incentive, I decided to challenge my brother Cam to a pullup challenge eventually,” Brendan says. At stake: If Brendan wins, Cam will have to read a massive book of his choice. And if Cam wins, Brendan will have to write an essay of more than 700 words about why Cam’s videos are better than his.
To start with, Brendan throws the 25-pound vest to see how many pullups he can do on day 1. He can only do five reps.
“Getting under six pullups just feels demoralizing,” he says.
With a baseline number to work from, he begins training with a program to strengthen his chest, upper back and biceps two to three times a week. He will supplement it with training in the lower body that fills the extra days. He divides the program between rep intervals that will target strength, hypertrophy and endurance.
Brendan trains on outdoor training rings and pullup bar setup, as well as indoor weighted pushups and TRX training. By the end of week 3, he is starting to see a real improvement with his pullups. On day 25, he achieves five full sets of five reps of pullups with the weighted vest on. He notes that his pushups have also gotten better and he can make sets of 15 reps with an additional 15 pounds in the West.
On the last day of the challenge, Brendan and Cam meet in a gym to see who has the ultimate upper body strength. Brendan notes that Cam has also increased his strength training and they are probably just as matched. Once the competition has started, the brothers set up their own pullup bars. Cam wears no extra weight while Brendan wears a 25-pound vest. And the winner is: Brendan. He takes 6 reps while Cam only manages 5 reps.
“I feel really good about the progress I was able to make,” Brendan says. “While training with a weighted vest will not quickly change your progress, I think it’s a valuable next step if you are consistently able to handle five sets of eight or 10 pullups.” He’s not mistaken. Adding resistance as a weight vest to your body weight movements is a proven way to build strength.
He notes that he will continue to train with the weighted vest, but with a lower weight and higher reps.
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