From 0 To 10 Pull-Ups: Day 11

Yesterday morning it felt like I’m spinning my wheels…

For ten days in a row I was able to only do 5 reps of 1 pull-up. I thought of quitting more than once. But since I’m documenting my challenge publicly, I feel I have to push harder and not to give up.

But then yesterday evening I accidentally did one more pull-up and one 30 second dead hang. 

It was relatively easy to hang with my hands extended for 20 seconds but the last 10 seconds were a light torture. My fingers ached, even though I was wearing my fitness gloves. Nonetheless I wanted to see if I could hang longer than before. And I did it. So maybe I only feel like spinning the wheels while in reality I’m going somewhere.

Today my morning started not with pull-ups but with the hunt for a huge spider. Ausra called me and said with a frightened voice, “Look, here is our Victor”. It’s a sure sign of the fall approaching when spiders are crawling in the house. This time Victor was simply waiting on the wall next to our bathroom. Was he hungry for Ausra or for me? How many domestic concerts did he listen to for free while we practiced our organ duets?

Victor is a spider character in our Pinky and Spiky comics series. Obviously Ausra didn’t want the spider in the house so I had to put it into a container and take it outside as Ausra was opposed to the idea of me letting him grow behind the cupboards.

So I grabbed my spider-hunting gear - a used container from a cottage cheese and a sheet of paper and carefully came over to that wall without switching on the light. After a moment or two Victor was in my container in my left hand while my right hand put the sheet of paper as a lid. I took him outside and as I threw him on the flowers in our garden it landed on the feet and stood there frozen. Either Victor was in shock of sudden change in temperature or my impolite behavior towards him or both. But that’s what you get when you don’t pay your rent, right?

So anyway, with the spider out of the way I was ready to do my pull-ups.

I jumped on the rings and did one pull-up. Not too hard, I thought. Then I picked up some fallen apples in the garden and again pulled myself up one time. Then again picked up some apples. This time I had to save an apple from the angry mob of ants which were eating it.

So I did 5 pull-ups with breaks of about 2 minutes in between them. Similarly to yesterday, the last two pull-ups were harder to do but actually tiny bit easier.

I was done with the pull-ups but still had some strength left in my arms and some fallen apples waited for me to be picked up.

Instead of going home, I did 3 more reps of one pull-up with rests. Total of 8 pull-ups today! Maybe I’m making progress after all…

To be fair, I did the last 3 pull-ups with lots of help from my legs. I know the form was not perfect but I wanted to see how much longer can my willpower hold today.

Tomorrow we’ll see if there are any consequences of this morning’s routine as I suspect muscle strain will be harder to ignore.