November 18, 2025 Workout of the Day

11/18/2025 Workout of the Day 

Pull Session

Warm up: decline bench leg raises x 3x10-15; 1 set of lat pulldowns x 15 reps

Ex 1: EMOM pullups-13 sets x 3-5 reps, every minute on the minute 

Ex 2: standing alternating DB curls-4x6-8

Ex 3: hammer curls-3x8-12

Total time = 29 minutes 

The gym at this place I'm staying was crowded (for the size of the gym) this morning. And while there was a nice lat pulldown machine, there really wasn't any good way to row. The dumbbells were too light and there was no cable row or machine row present. I was going to do inverted rows on the smith machine, but the space around there was crammed with people, cutting off any room for me to lay down beneath the bar, plus, one other guy went over and used it for bent over rows. He seemed to have a similar idea as I did — find a piece of equipment that wasn't being used and do a bunch of sets for 1 back exercise.

For me, that back exercise was pullups. I had my buddy do 4 sets of lat pulldowns and I just did pullups, every minute on the minute, until he was done. It came out to 13 minutes, so I got 13 sets of 3-5 reps. Pretty good volume per time, which equals good training density. Last Friday I used the same EMOM pullups approach but only for 11 minutes. So this actually turned out to be a pretty good back workout and I accumulated 2 more sets and about 10 more reps than last session. Win. 

When in doubt, or when limited by space or equipment, do 1 exercise that provides good returns on time invested, stay a few more reps away from failure than usual, and just blast a bunch of good, high quality sets for that exercise.

It was also a nice change for me since this pullup station was at a little cable cross area that had options for neutral grip AND wide overhand (wide grip, pronated) pullups. I don't usually have access to a neutral grip pullup bar so that was nice. Also, being forced to do all overhand pullups with a wide grip made pullups a little bit more challenging, which was also great. I alternated between wide grip pullups and neutral grip pullups every set. 

After my friend finished his pulldowns, I did my last set of pullups and then we each grabbed a pair of dumbbells, found some space between the rows of machines, and knocked out 4 sets of standing dumbbell curls with 1.5 minutes of rest, then 3 sets of hammer curls with 1 minute of rest between sets. 

That was sufficient to call it a day.