M2M Day 280: For some reason, I imagined this would be much easier
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For August, my goal is to complete one continuous set of 40 pull-ups.
I’m officially one week into the pull-up challenge. I’m definitely getting stronger, but not at the rate I was hoping, so I need to start thinking about ways I can augment my pure strength approach.
With this in mind, I decided today to experiment with hanging rests. In other words, I wanted to see if I could somehow rest while just hanging lock-armed on the bar, allowing me to theoretically extend my single set pull-up maximum.
Today, I worked out at a friend’s place, and on my way over, as I was visualizing how I would incorporate these hanging rests into a set of pull-ups, I was genuinely worried — Worried that I would easily do 40 pull-ups in this way and that the rest of the month’s narrative would be ruined.
Luckily, at least for the narrative, it’s a lot harder to rest on the bar than I thought. Although, I’m not sure today’s experiment was fully informative: I was too anxious and didn’t allow myself to rest for long enough on the bar.
Tomorrow, perhaps I’ll try resting for a full 20–30 seconds between each grouping of pull-ups. I’m not sure this will make things easier, but it’s worth a try.
Also, if I want to use this hanging method as a way to rest, I clearly need to increase my grip strength. Especially if I want to shake out one arm at a time — which may be more tiring than helpful anyway.
I’ll continue experimenting with this on-the-bar resting concept over the next few days, and see if I can get anything useful out of it.
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