Pull ups build grip strength and they recruit a lot of other muscles. Hanging is one thing, but you need grip plus lat muscles to pull yourself up over somethin

Pull ups build grip strength and they recruit a lot of other muscles. Hanging is one thing, but you need grip plus lat muscles to pull yourself up over something. I have Olympic rings that I have brought with me when working all over the world. I even had my baby almost two now hang from them when she was just one and a half years old. She held her own bodyweight for 10 seconds before my wife and in-laws flipped out. Same when I brought her swimming since birth. I lived in SE Asia for over 8 years. The last year I lived in a Javanese village in Indonesia. The average male weighed about 140 lb plus or minus, and they could lift 130 lb bags of rice and load a truck for hours on end. I could do it at 180 lb, but not as long a time as they could. The last part of lifting it above shoulder height for me to put it in the truck was the ultimate fatigue test. That was above their heads, and more like a full press for them. I admired their strength and smiles throughout all of this hard labor and poverty. Now I have returned to NY, and the number of obese people I see, and the number of walking aids, electric shopping carts, and other signs of malady are more striking and apparent to me. I was running barefoot 3 or more miles a day in the rice fields and jumping rope along with bodyweight exercises. I am 52 and I have never felt better physically or mentally. It only takes desire or willpower. Also I went vegetarian over 3 years ago, and cut eggs and dairy 2 years ago.