Get a Grip and Prolong Your Dance with Father Time
How long can you hang?
When I turned 65 in February 2023, I decided to re-establish a workout routine and dramatically scale back my alcohol consumption. (I now allow myself one adult drink/week, usually a beer with a spicy meal.)
That’s when I started my exercise regimen of 100 pushups a day plus long walks with my wife in the steep hills of Atami Japan.
Pushups are a great exercise and looking at the results over a year later, gotta say they’ve greatly exceeded my expectations. I am much stronger, well toned, and feel wonderful.
Doing the pushups gave me a good foundation to work from, but it was time to take the next step in my strength training. My preference was chin-ups and pull-ups, which require a parallel bar. The problem was, I didn’t have access to one.
My first inclination was to find a place at home where I could mount one.
While our old Japanese house is a solid structure with great bones, the doorways are mostly the wide sliding doors you normally see in a Japanese home, and the doorways that are “Western-style” wouldn’t be strong enough to support my weight or even accommodate a bar for that matter.
Well that changed last month. By happenstance, I found a suitable place while cleaning out an old closet.
So I sprung into action, purchased a chin-up bar, mounted it, and have been gleefully pulling-and-chinning up ever since.
But damn it was humbling getting back into it.
Clawing back muscle mass
There was a time in my youth when I could do 35 chin-ups — and I actually won several contests over the years. (Hey, I was skinny and super light.) But ah, to be young again!
And just ten years ago, I actually worked my way up to fifteen.
So I naturally assumed I could do at least ten this time.
Nope.
I did five. Almost. Um, let’s call it four-and-a-half.
Surprise, surprise, I lost muscle mass! Shouldn’t be a shock since that’s what naturally happens with age. And yet — shock.
But sometimes shock is good. And since I am a stubborn old curmudgeon, I am refusing to accept four-and-a-half chin-ups as my new standard.
As of today, I am up to eight chin-ups and six pull-ups, and am determined to keep increasing my reps. Gotta at least get back to fifteen, right?
A gripping tale
The other day when I told my son about my new chin-up bar, he mentioned the importance of grip strength and the correlation between grip strength and longevity.
(Author’s note: Before all the smarty-pants pedantic folks jump in to enlighten me, I’m well aware that correlation doesn’t imply causation; at the very least, how about we entertain the possibility that grip strength is something that’s worth monitoring?)
Anyway, my son challenged me to go home and try hanging for a minute. Or maybe he just wanted me to go home, I dunno. But since I had never before thought about just hanging, I was compelled to take up his challenge.
On my first try, I lasted a tad over two minutes. (And yesterday I hung for 2 minutes, 10 seconds, my longest time so far.)
Not sure where my hang time ranks in the large scheme of things, but my guess is “not bad for a 66-year-old man.”
After going down a YouTube rabbit hole, it seems that grip strength is indeed important to maintain as we age, and that a dead hang has many health benefits.
So I’ve added hanging to my routine.
What are y’all doing to prolong your dance with Father Time?
And how long can you hang?
Whether or not Rogan is your cup of tea, this is an interesting segment with Peter Attia.
The above article is © Tim Sullivan 2024
