This is last year’s story. I had not done any sort of weight training for a number of years. I tried doing pull ups and I could barely do only two! I was not over weight and seemed like I was in decent shape but still two is two! No getting around it!

That’s when I decided to see if I could increase the number of pull ups I could do. Pull ups or chin ups to me are the same thing. Ones I am referring to are where hands are about should width apart and palms facing you.

Grease the Groove

I decided to try Pavel Tsatsouline’s grease the groove method. It’s quite interesting.

Basically, you do a number of reps through out the day. Trick is to never exert yourself and you should feel fresh after every set.

For example, if you can do 10 pull ups, then max you should be doing at any given time is maybe 4-5. As you can do those without really forcing yourself. Do 4-5 (40-50% of your max) through out the day. Slowly increase your intensity by either doing more reps per set or doing them more times (more sets) during the day.

I started doing 1 pull up 3-4 times a day. Slowly I increased to 2 reps, then 3, then 4 and so on.

I would do these for maybe two weeks straight then check my max number of pull ups over the weekend and then take a day or two off after that to recuperate.

I had a pull up bar at home that would go around the door frame. It was awesome until it broke my door frame. :-(

Anyhow, I did one set in the morning, one set at night after work and 1-2 sets during work. Doing it at work was where it got interesting. I found a bar at one of the stalls in the washroom so I started doing the pull ups there. :-)

The washroom door had a combination lock so I would always know when someone was punching in the code in order to enter and that was perfectly safe for me. It gave me enough time to stop doing the pull ups and be washing my hands before anyone entered. Perfectly natural!

One day that combination lock broke so instead of fixing it, they just totally took the whole knob and lock out. Now people could just come in without any warning.

One day a senior manager walked in and I quickly stopped but he noticed what I was doing. I don’t think he ever told anyone but he would look at me differently now. :-)

That kind of put a stop to my pull ups at the washroom stalls at work. And now the door frame being broken by my home pull up bar so I couldn’t do them at home either.

That’s when I stopped doing them but not before doing 14 pull ups all the way up to all the way down, with perfect form! :-)

Needless to say I was quite impressed with myself and with this system by Pavel Tsatsouline.

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