4 ms·

I recommend doing negatives (jumping up to the pullup bar off a box or something and lowering yourself down steadily) to rapidly improve your pullups. You can q

I recommend doing negatives (jumping up to the pullup bar off a box or something and lowering yourself down steadily) to rapidly improve your pullups. You can quickly get to being able to do one after never having been able to, or in your case, you should be able to get from 1 pull/chin up to 3-4 fairly quickly. Good luck, and keep up the good work

RobertRoberts 9y ago
I like that idea, I will try it. I did get up to 4 though, but I am not trying. :P I am doing the absolute minimum that I can handle. I don't break a sweat even, and my breathing is barely elevated. (part of goals, not to over do it) Also, another rule I have, if it hurts, I stop. Period. So one day I did a few squats, my knee felt funny on one, a little pain on the next. I stopped. The next day it was fine and I did 20 squats again. Thanks for the suggestion.
- fyfy18 9y ago
  Regarding the pain, a few years ago I injured my lower back. Recently I haven’t really been paying much attention to it, and even just bending down to pick something up caused a little pain in my back and knees. A month ago I went to a health spa and within a few days all my pain was gone. I wasn’t doing very strenuous excercises, but the important thing was I was doing something every day and using most of my muscles - it was basically aerobics designed for middle-age people. My point is firstly that pain can be caused just because you aren’t using the muscles. Muscles get stiff if not used and that inturn can cause more problems (I believe most of my back injury was caused by tight hamstrings). And secondly it’s often easy to fix, you don’t need to be deadlifting 300lbs and spending 3 hours in a gym, just some simple excercises you can do at home is enough. I wouldn’t even worry about how many you can do or whether your form is perfect (within reason), just using the muscles is the important part - especially for most of us who are at a desk for 9+ hours a day.
  - RobertRoberts 9y ago
    Thanks for the note, it's good to know it's not a fluke to have these methods work out. It's almost comical how rarely I've heard the kind of advice for light exercise. It's almost always "you have to get your heart rate up to 120 bpm for 30 min or you are wasting your time!" bah. "you need to do 200 reps or you're wasting your time!" double bah. I run a totally lame mile run a few times a week, and I like my exercising, I make it easy and mostly enjoyable, and it's turned my life around. I agree with the sore muscle thing, I had my acheles tendon hurt really bad when running. So I had to stop for a month. But when I started to run again, it still hurt, I was worried. Here's the really dumb part. My TV/movie based medical knowledge told me that I may have to work through some pain (ie, like in physical therapy) to get my ankle back to normal. It was healed, just not in shape, or some such dumb thing. And it worked! (yah for the movie about the hurt army soldier who had to get his legs working again! and the stubborn nurse that wouldn't let him quit!) Remember in old british movies/tv they would go out on a "constitutional"? (I thought that was so uptight and funny when I was younger)
hi41 9y ago
That is such a nice idea. I am tempted to try this. I am very bad at pull ups. Like you said I have done exactly zero pullups.
- RobertRoberts 9y ago
  I completely understand, you should give it a shot. All I did was just try a couple times, I'd do like 1/5th of a pullup a couple times a day, and after awhile I could just do a little more, without any extra work. :P Hope it works out for you. I put a pullup bar where I walk past consistently, so I don't have to go out of my way to make a try at it.

RobertRoberts 9y ago

I like that idea, I will try it. I did get up to 4 though, but I am not trying. :P I am doing the absolute minimum that I can handle. I don't break a sweat even, and my breathing is barely elevated. (part of goals, not to over do it) Also, another rule I have, if it hurts, I stop. Period. So one day I did a few squats, my knee felt funny on one, a little pain on the next. I stopped. The next day it was fine and I did 20 squats again. Thanks for the suggestion.

fyfy18 9y ago
Regarding the pain, a few years ago I injured my lower back. Recently I haven’t really been paying much attention to it, and even just bending down to pick something up caused a little pain in my back and knees. A month ago I went to a health spa and within a few days all my pain was gone. I wasn’t doing very strenuous excercises, but the important thing was I was doing something every day and using most of my muscles - it was basically aerobics designed for middle-age people. My point is firstly that pain can be caused just because you aren’t using the muscles. Muscles get stiff if not used and that inturn can cause more problems (I believe most of my back injury was caused by tight hamstrings). And secondly it’s often easy to fix, you don’t need to be deadlifting 300lbs and spending 3 hours in a gym, just some simple excercises you can do at home is enough. I wouldn’t even worry about how many you can do or whether your form is perfect (within reason), just using the muscles is the important part - especially for most of us who are at a desk for 9+ hours a day.
- RobertRoberts 9y ago
  Thanks for the note, it's good to know it's not a fluke to have these methods work out. It's almost comical how rarely I've heard the kind of advice for light exercise. It's almost always "you have to get your heart rate up to 120 bpm for 30 min or you are wasting your time!" bah. "you need to do 200 reps or you're wasting your time!" double bah. I run a totally lame mile run a few times a week, and I like my exercising, I make it easy and mostly enjoyable, and it's turned my life around. I agree with the sore muscle thing, I had my acheles tendon hurt really bad when running. So I had to stop for a month. But when I started to run again, it still hurt, I was worried. Here's the really dumb part. My TV/movie based medical knowledge told me that I may have to work through some pain (ie, like in physical therapy) to get my ankle back to normal. It was healed, just not in shape, or some such dumb thing. And it worked! (yah for the movie about the hurt army soldier who had to get his legs working again! and the stubborn nurse that wouldn't let him quit!) Remember in old british movies/tv they would go out on a "constitutional"? (I thought that was so uptight and funny when I was younger)

hi41 9y ago

That is such a nice idea. I am tempted to try this. I am very bad at pull ups. Like you said I have done exactly zero pullups.

RobertRoberts 9y ago
I completely understand, you should give it a shot. All I did was just try a couple times, I'd do like 1/5th of a pullup a couple times a day, and after awhile I could just do a little more, without any extra work. :P Hope it works out for you. I put a pullup bar where I walk past consistently, so I don't have to go out of my way to make a try at it.