For me, pull-ups have always been the apex of fitness. They seemed like an impossible maneuver when I was a kid. I'm a fairly big guy, and I remember the unfairness of getting tested on pull-ups when I was little. The tiny kids would bang them out easily but it was easy to see that -- above a certain body mass -- the ability to do pull-ups dropped disproportionately. Even long after I started lifting weights regularly, there was a mental block for me on pull-ups.
This only increased their allure.
This morning, I published a post over at Observer.com in which I listed 25 really good (mostly) YouTube videos about pull-ups.
You should check out the post.
Really.
Do it now.
Seriously, that's why I am writing this post, because I want you to go over there.
I'LL WAIT.
When I initially wrote the post, I did it as more personal story about my fixation on pull-ups. As I revised it, though, I took all that out. I think journalists should be guarded about when and where to go first person. It didn't seem necessary in this case. I wanted to do a deep dive into the culture of doing pull-ups on YouTube. The parts about me weren't adding anything.
But here it is:
I've always been fairly strong, but my overall strength really varies with how actively I have been weightlifting. When I stop, it drops fast.
About ten years ago, I managed to get over the mental hurdle of doing pull-ups, but even at my strongest I've always been stuck at about 10-13 pull-ups (I think my last few pull-ups might not actually qualify, much like the Mark Wahlberg video in the post (that you should really check out).
I've also found that I don't have a lot of strength in that last little bit of the pull-up. I can get my chin over the bar lots of times, but I can't touch my chest to the bar a single time (like lots of the guys in the videos in my post can).
The summer of 2013 my girlfriend of four years broke it off with me and I went on a summer-long fitness binge, because it helps to take your mind off things and it beats the depression away. I got back into the pull-ups thing. There was a great outdoor gym in Prospect Park about two miles from my home. So I'd run there and do pull-ups and run back. It was a pretty good overall workout.
In the process, I started looking for advice on improving my pull-ups, and that's how I discovered this whole world of YouTube videos on the topic. I learned what a muscle-up was, for example, and a planche. These are things that are so difficult it's hard to believe they are even possible. But lots of guys can do them.
In an effort to improve my pull-up, I got a little fixated on grip strength. That's a whole other world on YouTube.
I spent a lot of time watching calisthenics videos that summer. A lot of time. The 25 videos I posted are just the beginning of what I saw, but they are some of the best content.
In researching the story from this morning, though, I stumbled across one more video that I hadn't seen before.
This one:
I have always had this suspicion that maybe there was some muscle or exercise I should be doing besides pull-ups that could help me get over that 10 rep hump and maybe even get my chest higher. So I'm going to look into working on my brachioradialis muscles (basically, do more curls, but with your palm facing out) and see if that seems to show progress. Cross your fingers.
Seriously, if you are looking for a fitness goal for next year, you could do worse than pull-ups. If you can do multiple pull-ups, you've achieved stamina, endurance and strength all at once. Pull-ups demonstrate a kind of full body fitness in a much more complete way than weight or heart rate.
Maybe you should check out some YouTube videos on the topic?