Perpetual Motion

For beginners and those who already train and want more pull-ups and push-ups in a row. You need a pull-up bar and dip bars. 3 workouts a week, 4 exercises each. Two 4-week stages: in Base the rest between sets shortens week by week, starting at 75 seconds, in Build the load moves in a wave with a step back in week 3. The exercises stay the same in both stages, with more reps in Build.

The program is built around pull-ups, dips and push-ups. Bar pull-ups appear in two workouts, the third has rows lying under the dip bars in their place. Dips appear in two workouts. Floor push-ups in one, the other has push-ups from a high support: dip bars or a bench. All exercises use body weight, and the app picks the number of reps from your results. After each set you note how it went, and if it was easy, the app makes the next set of the same workout longer. The goal of the program is more reps in a row in each of these movements.

Method: High-rep endurance work.
With body weight the load stays the same, so reps set the effort, and they grow with your ratings after each set. High-rep work builds muscular endurance.

What studies found:

• Low-rep sets build strength, high-rep sets build muscular endurance (Campos et al., 2002)
• In trained lifters, light weights gave the same muscle growth and more endurance, with a smaller gain in max strength (Schoenfeld et al., 2015)
• Push-ups and a light bench press produced similar gains in muscle and strength (Kikuchi et al., 2017)

The studies tested high-rep work with external weight and push-ups; pull-ups and dips were not tested.