Brag Post: Two Pull-ups!

[fitfool]

Thanks to all of you who offered advice and tips on how to work up to doing pull-ups. I work from home and the pull-up bar is in the doorway of my home office. So I kept trying stuff on the bar whenever I walked by it. I tried a mishmash of the various suggestions I could do. Lots of bent-arm hangs, slow negatives (jump up and then lower myself from bar) and assisted pull-ups whenever my boyfriend was around to help push me up over the bar. At the gym, I focused on the Gravitron (for assisted pull-ups and dips), lat pull-downs, and any machines that said they helped make my back stronger.

And especially thanks to all you women who posted that you could do a pull-up (and even several of them!). It made it seem that much more possible with enough work. (http://community.livejournal.com/gymrats/1831348.html)

Questions:
1. My body just folds up when I try to lift myself up. Is it trying to doggy-paddle its way towards a kipping pull-up?

2. Does it make it easier to do a pull-up when my legs come up too? I need to concentrate to try to keep my waist straight and if I do so, I can only do one at a time so far. My boyfriend's legs come up naturally straight so he ends up in an L-shape when his chin is above the bar.

OK...maybe it's not a big deal for some of you but I've never been able to do two pull-ups in my life. I was so happy about it that I called up my sister to boast. Her husband picked up the phone.

Me: Oh Hi! I was calling to brag to my sister but I can brag to you too.
Sister's husband: Ok...Go ahead. Let's hear it.
Sister (noticing the anticipating-big-news tone in his voice): She's getting marrried?!

My sister got on the phone afterwards to congratulate me for the pull-ups too (though I don't think she was as excited as if I had gotten engaged)

Cross-posted to gymrats

Comments

[vereorc.livejournal.com]

I totally meant to reply back when I first read this, but I have such a big backlog of posts to reply to! Anyway, my husband has been trying to follow the fitness program on crossfit.com for a few months now. And everytime I think about his doing that, I automatically think of you. Whenever I glance over his shoulders at his screen when he's watching one of the video demonstrations of the fit girls at crossfit, I think of you!

Anyway, just thought you might want to check it out.

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the pointer! There are a couple folks on my f-list who do CrossFit and they've been posting some pretty impressive gains in strength. So I've been doing a few CrossFit-like workouts here and there. I don't follow the WOD that they post online because it's way too hard for me though there is another site that posts scaled-down versions. Mostly I don't follow any certain regimen because I haven't committed to it yet. How has your husband been doing with CrossFit?

[vereorc.livejournal.com]

He hasn't had time lately because he's been training for about twelve hours a day, plus another three hours of study time. Back when he was doing it daily, he really liked it a lot because he felt they were very challenging and were short enough to fit into tight schedules. (But apparently not short enough to fit in nowadays.)

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

12 hours of training already? Seems like that would be plenty of a workout already :P

[vereorc.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry. I meant, twelve hours of helicopter training. He doesn't do much of the old training he used to do anymore.