Well, so I had decided I wanted to be able to do pullups. Well, at least one to start. I made this decision in November. I knew it would take me a while to work up to it. But with all the swimming I had been doing, especially the Masters swimming that I started in June, my upper body was stronger than I ever remember it being. And I was also doing some upper body strength training. It really seemed like a good time to go for the pullup.

I got some ideas from the Fifty Pullups site and also from the article on Mistressing the Pullup. I couldn’t do even the Week 1 program on the Fifty Pullups site, but I decided to pick some exercises and just keep doing them and at least make some progress. And I picked a date. First day of spring 2011. March 20th 2011. By that day I wanted to be able to do at least 1 pullup unassisted.

So the exercises I picked to work on were: Assisted pullup machine. Pullup position max hang with slow negative pullup. Lat pull downs. Modified (Australian) pullups. Also I have the stretch resistance chords for practicing swim stroke, which uses lats (latissimus dorsi … the muscles used for good, hard swimming and in pullups), so I do that sometimes, too. When I’m at home I do dumbbell pullovers on my weight bench and dumbbell rows. Read the rest of this entry »