Pull Ups

Pull ups hold a weird fascination for me. I’m not quite sure why. It looks like some sort of energy alchemy is taking place. We start with a dead hang. The term dead hang is very apt. There’s no energy, no motion. Gravity is against you. The Gods are surely against you. I still don’t understand how the initial movement towards the bar happens. In the same way that I don’t really understand how the Big Bang took place from a state of nothingness. Each time I wrap my hands around the bar and hang there in the starting position, the dead hang, I still don’t know if I’ll be able to raise myself up at all.

It’s pretty humbling when you’re starting ability is zero reps as mine was. With most weights one simply starts at a weight where you can manage a certain number of reps and then increase the weight as you get stronger. You don’t turn up to the gym each day attempting to deadlift a weight that you are entirely incapable of budging. It took me around a month to achieve a solitary pull up. You best believe I gave it the old fist pump after that. For an entire month I had to turn up each day and subject myself to the embarrassment of not being able to perform one rep. I took some solace in the fact that my fellow early morning park goers were somehow part of my journey. When I can do ten pull ups they’ll be able to tell their kids they were there at the beginning when I couldn’t even do one.

The slow progress is part of the beauty of pull ups. It took me a further month to be able to perform two. In fact with the second rep I could only get my chin up to the bar rather than over the bar, but since Norris McWhirter was not around to independently adjudicate, I counted it. Double fist pump. I will just about allow it when my chin is at the bar rather than over the bar, but true Wahlbergian pull ups I will not.