Survival of the Fittest

[photo courtesy of shoeboxin on flickr]

I cannot be stopped. From writing about pull-ups, anyway. I can be stopped all-too-easily from actually doing them.

But after this post, I promise to try to attempt to consider writing about pull-ups less often. (Sorry — as far as promises go, that’s the best I can do right now. Kelly at Fitness Fixation and Crabby at Cranky Fitness are talking about pull-ups, too, so that reeled me in all over again.)

If you’re new here, please allow me to inundate you with previous pull-up posts so you, too, can choose between feeling irritated or inspired: “How to Do a Pull-up (or 15),” “Pull-Ups Ad Nauseam,” “Tomorrow’s Work Out: Pull-Ups” and “Lax in L.A.”

After “How to Do a Pull-up (or 15),” my former rugby teammate and longtime friend Halvo left a comment announcing that not only can she do 37 consecutive pull-ups, but that she’s recently been working toward one-armed pull-ups. (What?!) To add insult to injury, she then advocated trying pull-ups with added weight. Which is great advice, don’t get me wrong — if you can already do at least a handful of pull-ups. Or more than a handful.

But many of us are struggling to get to that point, so I wasn’t surprised when I received an indignant email from a reader saying, “Who IS that girl, anyway?!”

[Pull-ups are whatEVER.]

WHO IS HALVO? She’s a Mensa-belonging, Wedge Co-op-loving, rugby-playing, sweet-as-pie fitness freak who occasionally likes to break things in dark alleys. (Things people put out as trash. And she cleans up her mess afterward.) And she will be visiting Philadelphia next weekend, so if you’re in the area and you’d like to feel her biceps, let me know.

At my request, she took some video of herself doing her thang on the pull-up bar, and she sent me three videos in all. One of her cranking out some very impressive almost-one-armed pull-ups; one of her doing a few with added weight; and one of her doing a superhuman number of pull-ups. Pretty amazing stuff, even if you don’t bother with pull-ups yourself. Something is up with the last video, so you’ll have to settle for the first two.

Single-Armed Halvo

Warning: She appears to attack the videographer afterward, so the camera gets a little Blair Witch Project for a second there. Get your barf bag.

Heavy Halvo

Warning: Extreme jealousy may ensue after watching this video.

Halvo says: “I started really working on pull-ups about a year and a half ago. I think I could already do 12 in a row, but my form was probably pretty bad. I do pull-ups two or three times a week, on the same days that I lift my shoulders, back and biceps. I do three sets of as many regular pull-ups as I can, resting 30 to 60 seconds in between. Interspersed throughout the rest of my workout, I do a set each of wide-grip pull-ups, parallel-grip pull-ups, chin-ups (underhand grip), one-armed pull-ups and L-pull-ups. I add weight to all but the L- and one-armed pull-ups.”

If you didn’t get that barf bag yet, might want to grab it now. Oh, to be that strong … [wistful sigh] (But take heart — she has little bitty stick legs.)

IN PURSUIT OF THAT KIND OF STRENGTH — or at least the kind of strength it takes to do a single pull-up, which is enough of a feat — Experience Life published the article “Clear the Bar,” which features an exercise progression that, if all goes well, will result in your doing an unassisted pull-up.

If you recall, the photo shoot for the article was held in L.A., at the gym where the reality TV show Work Out is filmed. (Yes, I met Jackie Warner, and as with most celebrities, she’s tiny in person.)

The night before the shoot, I was informed that we would be shooting some accompanying video of the exercises, and that I would be providing commentary.

This is what I said: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooo!”

This is what my editor said: “You’ll be great. Good luck!”

Well, I was decidedly NOT great. The idea of being in front of a camera wipes my brain perfectly clean, which I proved with take after (mis)take where I appeared not to know my own name or where I worked.

The only thing I could have answered for sure was the question, “Do you like being on camera?” (NO.)

Regardless, the finished product can now be found in Experience Life’s video section (who knew we had one of those?!). Also posted below. No promises about the quality — it’s literally our art director Lydia holding the camera and me reading the descriptions from the article as our fitness models Megan and Kaese did the exercises. But sometimes it’s just nice to see exercise demos, and the video serves that purpose adequately enough.

Experience Life Pull-Up Series

Warning: I should have introduced myself by saying, “Hello, I’m a giant toolbox.”

Oh, and since in the video I completely forgot to introduce each exercise, they are as follows: standing lat pull-downs, assisted L-pull-ups, resistance-band pull-ups, eccentric (or negative) pull-ups and partner pull-ups. Enjoy!

[Pull-ups can be scenic.]

Yes, I’m still going on about pull-ups. (Mainly to postpone doing the work I should be concentrating on instead.) But hey, if you’ve grown weary of the topic — if you don’t want to learn how to do this bang-for-your-buck bodyweight exercise better — you’re welcome to leave.

Wait! I didn’t mean it! Please don’t leave. It’s just … wouldn’t it be nicer if we did this together?

[winning smile]

Confession time: In my current state of fitness, I can only do 2.5 pull-ups without assistance. OK, 2.25. In my last post, when I said, “For instance, tuckered after two?” I was talking about myself. Sigh.

A couple years ago, I could do seven, and at the time, I thought that was pretty decent, but now I’ve got to take my old number and double it. Oh, and add one more (see this post for the herstory of this madness).

THE FOLLOWING WORKOUT PROGRAM has been ripped off seven ways from Sunday, so allow me to trace its path so everyone involved gets credit. My friend Liz sent it to me, as her friend Dre had sent it to her. Adam Campbell, editor at Men’s Health, likely wrote about it over there at some point, but by the time we got our grubby mitts on it, the article was posted here on Active.com. The trail doesn’t end there — the technique originated with Michael Mejia, CSCS, former U.S. Navy Seal and author of The Special Ops Workout. (Not to be confused with Mark De Lisle’s Special Ops Fitness Training: High-Intensity Workouts of Navy Seals, Delta Force, Marine Force Recon and Army Rangers.)

Mejia recommends doing the following routine two or three days a week, resting at least a day between sessions. The original copy set the goal at the Rangers’ lofty-enough goal of 12, but I’ve altered it to reflect the U.S. women’s rugby backs’ standard of 15. Because that seems reasonable.

THE SPECIAL OPS’ PULL-UP PLAN
The Goal: 15
The Plan: Take the most pull-ups you can do at one time and divide that number in half. Now perform sets of that number of repetitions — resting 60 seconds after each set — until you’ve done at least 15 pull-ups. Each workout, reduce your rest between sets by 5 seconds, until you’re down to zero rest and able to do 15 consecutive pull-ups.

Pretty simple, really. Hypothetically, say you can do four consecutive pull-ups max. Halve that so you’re doing sets of two with 60 seconds rest in between until you get to — well, 16, because these numbers don’t crunch perfectly. Let’s call it mandatory extra credit. In total, you’ll do eight sets of two. That’s reasonable, right?

And each workout will take less time than the last, which is hugely motivating (to me, anyway). Especially since I’m starting with sets of one, and this thing is going to take me forever at first. Oooh, I’m whiny today, and I think my Door Gym (like the one pictured at right) is mocking me. I guess I should be thankful that a creepy batwoman isn’t hanging on mine. That would be awkward.

IS ANYONE ELSE being haunted by encounters with pull-ups lately? I mean, besides by me. Ha! I can’t seem to escape them, and thus, neither can you. That’s the way this works.

Take, for instance, last night. My friend Kim invited me to do a workout with her at Velocity Sports Performance in Cherry Hill, N.J., and being a sucker for performance gyms, I took her up on the offer. I nearly collapsed after the seemingly extra-dynamic warm-up, but considering there seemed to be no escaping the evil, Justin Timberlake-lookalike trainer, I hung in there — literally.

We ended the hour with three sets of 10 partner pull-ups. (For how to do partner pull-ups, see “Clear the Bar” in the May 2008 issue of Experience Life.) And even as I was thinking, “Whyyyyy?!” I was also thinking, “Why not?” It’s fun to be strong.