How I went from 6 pull ups to 30+

When I found out that I’d be a father. one important question surfaced in my mind. Until then, it had been dormant in my subconsciousness.

What makes a good father?

question

Also, for reasons unknown, I started thinking about death and my bucket list.

My bucket list had had three points.

1. Become a father.
2. Learn to ride a motorcycle.
3. Do over 21 pullups.

Points 1 and 2 were being achieved.

The third one was a little surprising.

You see, during all my teenage years I could do about 17 pull ups. Best in my class. This title of the “king of pull-ups” was covering an embarrassing defeat.

When I was about 8 years old, I lost a school pull-up contest.

I did 19. The winner did 21.

I still remember that moment. He got a nice big set of about 24 colorful markers as a prize. I got a set of 8 crappy crayons.

I remember how I felt.

Defeated. Destroyed. Humiliated.

When I shared these feeling with my mom, she pointed out that I had been sick the week prior to the contest, and my body hadn’t recovered yet.

I gladly accepted that excuse partially because I believed it – my personal best at that time had been 23 pullups, so I could have beaten him on another day, and partially because I wanted those feelings of guilt and humiliation to be gone.

However, as with any strongly emotional childhood experience, the memory remained with me as unresolved problem.

And then it surfaced on my bucket list.

Since we lived in the rental house, I couldn’t remodel it and there was no place to put an exercise bar, so I bought a pair of gymnast rings and hung them from the balcony.

My initial max pull ups was 10. It meant that to achieve my goal I had to more than double the number.

I knew that I wouldn’t be an easy or a quick job.

So, I needed to be smart.

I employed 3 main strategies to get there:

1. Light exercise – doing exercise that is below your max. This will let you workout more consistently and will avoid overtraining, while still giving you more reps.
2. Anchor my pull-ups to something I do already. In my case, it was leaving for work, meals, and sometimes taking shower. I would do one set of pull-ups before each of these.
3. Setting achievable goals. My primary goal was consistency, not reps. It was to keep exercising despite setbacks. For example, if I did 4 pull ups instead of my usual 6 (when tired or sick), I’d still be OK with it and would consider the job well done for that set. As for rep goals, I had them too, but they were always “do one more rep”. If my best was 18, my next goal was 19.

Using these three strategies, in 2 years since I started, I skipped less than 15 days of exercise. That is less than 2%. I achieved my goal of 21 pullups in half a year . That was a huge relief. Years later, I did what I hadn’t done on that competition day.

A month later, I beat my own personal record of 23.

I was in the best shape of my life! Now what?

This is a critical point, a point where so many people stop. Many achieve some goal, and then they feel satisfied and they stop.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

But if you ask yourself “is this the best I can do?” the answer is usually “no”.

Thanks to my 3 strategies I had achieved my goal without much mental pressure and suffering. Sure, it was hard physically, but it was also a lot of fun. This process built my focus, confidence and my improved my willpower.

Up to that point, the process has been motivating and exciting. So, why stop?

And I didn’t stop.

I just kept doing pull ups every day, without much mental effort. And when you get used to the physical effort, it feels no different from walking or getting out of bed.

For the first time in my life, I did 30 pull ups about year and a half into the process. But I didn’t stop there either. I kept doing more.

So, this is how I got to my personal best of 36 pull ups.

Since then, I switched to other challenges, but at any given moment (given time to recover from other workouts, of course) I can still do over 30 pullups.

Here’s a simple formula I followed and went from 6 to 36 pull ups

I tried about 5 different approaches to increasing strength and reps, but this is the only sustainable “formula” that worked long-term (over 1 year).

Using it, I went from 6 pull-ups to over 36 (in about 2 years) and it was easy to adhere to it.

I know, it goes against everything they teach new fitness coaches, but it works, even if you’re a busy dad of two, with a newborn baby (my case).

It works because it’s dead simple. It’s better to stick to an “okay” system than fail following a great system.

Here it goes:

1. Decide on one (!) complex calisthenics exercise that you can do at home and that takes no prep. E.g.: pull ups, push-ups, muscle ups etc.
2. Find your initial 1 set maximum: perform that exercise until failure and note the number.
3. Set a goal of 2x your initial 1 set max. (e.g. if your max was 3 pull ups – your goal is 6)
4. Hard work begins! Every day do your goal number of reps. (e.g.: every day you do 6 pull ups. You can do 6 sets of 1 or two sets of 3 – doesn’t matter)
5. When you achieve your goal set – celebrate, mark it on the calendar, savor the moment.
6. If you do your goal set 5 days straight, add 25% – that’s your new goal. (if you did 6, your goal is 7.5 pull ups, or a round number of 8). Go back to #4 – rinse and repeat.

Important: resist the urge to do extra reps. If you’ve done your max for today, just rest. Don’t forget to celebrate.