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!