On June 23, 2019, I did 510 pullups between 6:15AM and 6:45PM. I'd like to share some reflections on the experience, including some background, the flow of the day, technical aspects of the training that especially helped, and spiritual patterns I've integrated into my training and their role in the day. I'll finish with final reflections and gratitude to those that helped me get here.
I write a short journal after every training session citing what I liked and what I could improve. This is an extended journal entry for an extended training session.
This is my travel pull-up kit: a small 2x4 carved with notches on the side and bottom to hold a rope firmly. The rope has easily-adjusted bowline loops on both ends to hold the hand-hold and go around a beam. It gives me a lot of flexibility in where I can do pullups, and because the rope rotates as I pull upwards, it reduces strain on my wrists compared with regular pull-up bars. I can do two handed pullups with one hand over the other, or uneven pullups of various kinds. For this challenge, I only did two-handed pullups with one hand cupped over the other.
Background
I couldn't do any pullups at all growing up, not 'til my mid-20s. It wasn't until around the time I turned 30 I could do multiple - I remember feeling so psyched 3 years ago when I got 5 in a row. For years since my late teens I went along without any mentorship in strength training even though I sought it out a few times, learning what I could from various books and people but I never felt like I was growing much. I'm glad that's changed now.
I woke up with a goal of 300 pullups in a day, intending to stay up
late or do whatever I needed to get there. My old record was 155, set a
month earlier (but I wasn't actually testing my max, I just did a lot of
pullups), and before that 100, a record I set in fall 2017.
A
month or two ago, I realized I wanted to set ambitious goals for my
martial arts and strength trainings to help focus my effort. I only have
two friends that especially enjoy pullups, so I asked both separately
if they'd like to train up to do 1,000 pullups in a day together, or 500
each by the last day of summer or fall. It seemed outlandishly high,
but doable. None of the friends wanted to do it, but I decided to set
the goal for myself anyway. I hoped if I could reach 300 in a day
yesterday, that would show me how close I was to 500 and what I needed
to work on to get there.
I'm visiting my grandmother, and the weather was 100 degrees F hot and dry, so I spent most of the day inside her home resting or outside on the patio doing pullups.
Lastly: In my strength training, I specifically train for for maximum-strength, not strength-endurance, so 500 pullups-in-a-day might at first seem a strange goal. I picked it for a few reasons:
- Social: I hoped to have an all-day pullup fest with a friend and do 1,000 together, which sounded fun. Sadly it was not to be.
- Day-long: Normally my training tests/pushes me over seconds or a minute or two at a time. I wanted a day-long challenge for fun and variety.
- Sounded fun to me: 'nuf said!
Looking back on that list, 'fun' was in all three bullet points. I guess that's the reason for the 500-pullup challenge after all.
Flow of the Day
A key aspect in my training is to never get close to exhaustion. This way the tank always feels full, so to speak, and each set always finishes with me raring to do another one. I'll share more detail below in the 'technical aspects' section, but that desire to avoid exhaustion while maximizing repetitions explains the flow of the day.
I decided to do all pullups in a ladder-pattern, specifically a ladder-5. This means I do 1 pullup then pause, 2 pullups, then pause, then 3, pause, 4, pause, 5, done. For each pause, I walk away from the pullup spot and shake it loose. I call each of these individual sets 'mini-sets'. Each ladder thus yields 15 pullups, 1+2+3+4+5. I'll explain the benefits of this more below in the technical section, but I find this a tremendously helpful training pattern.
I woke up thinking I wasn't feeling up to shooting for 300, and maybe I'd put it off for a couple days. But I often start the day with a ladder-5 of pullups, so I did, and I enjoyed it so I did another. Then it was on!
Between 6:15AM and 8:30, I did 150 pullups, or 10 ladder-5s. At this point, I started thinking seriously about changing my goal to 500.
I connected with my Grandma for a bit, in whose back patio I did almost all the pullups, and then from 9-10AM, I did my daily sit spot, where I go to a particular space nearby and tune in to the life there.
10:00-noon: I did another 150, or 10 ladder-5s. Total by noon: 300.
I started out at 10:00 feeling fresh still, like I'd just done a little warmup. But then I did something a little foolish:
A key practice I cultivate is to always respect the wisdom of the body, and never let the ego-ideals override that. I sensed a desire to get 300 pullups in before noon, and so I rushed my last 3-4 ladders, doing them even when I felt like resting for another minute. If I had needed to do 300 pullups before noon to win a competition, or make money, or ensure I'd reach my 500-goal by bedtime, this'd be just fine. But I did it mostly 'cause I wanted to say I did 300 before noon, and I even knew that was a poor reason, but I went for it anyway. I consider this a minor error. If my goal had been 700, this kind of error where I continue before fully recovering might have meant missing the goal. I never failed to do a pullup, but I struggled on the 15th pullup once or twice in this stretch, and I wondered how well I'd recover during the upcoming break I anticipated after the 300 mark.
12:00-2:30PM: It was a 100oF day in a town appropriately named Bakersfield, California - it baked! So I took off 12:00-2:30 to rest, make a small lunch, and invite my grandmother to tell stories from her childhood. At this point, I decided it was 500 or bust.
2:30-6:45PM: I did the last 210 pullups, or 19 ladder-5s, during this time. My pace slowed a little. I rested more between mini-sets in the ladders, and I rested more between ladders. While resting during the ladder, I'd clean the patio from my seaweed project, or water the plants, or just breathe and tune in to the world around me and my body-feelings. House finches, scrub-jays, and mourning doves sometimes kept me company. Between ladders I'd go inside and talk with my grandmother and reassure her that I wasn't hurt. I'll share more of my in-between-ladders rhythm in the technical section below.
I started feeling a little soreness in my
lats around 400, but began doing arm-circles and this mild soreness stopped worsening. A few times in the 300-range I felt soreness in my biceps and shoulders, but I KNEW this meant my form was suffering, so each time I made immediate adjustments and the ache/tiredness went away with the next ladder. I started to feel whole-body-tired in the early 400s, and I knew I could make 500, but it'd take dedication.
I sensed I could get to 600, but it didn't seem worth it. Recovery would take much longer and interfere with other training, and wouldn't demonstrate much more than 500.
My only discomfort came from the rope rubbing against my fingers and causing hot-spots (pre-blisters), as my hand-hold is too narrow.
I finished the last ladder, totaling 510 pullups, knowing I had lots more pullups in me. 600 seemed possible if I just kept on. But I decided to "leave strength in the bank" as Paul Wade of Convict Conditioning put it: unless there's a special need such as a competition, always finish knowing you could do more.
 |
| I keep a calendar where I very briefly track the practices I want to do daily or very regularly. Pullups are special: they get a tally mark for every ladder. They normally vary between 50-150 pullups/day when I'm not traveling or resting and then June 23 (bottom left) was different! Adding a tick mark after each ladder was a fun way to celebrate and observe my progress throughout the day. |
Technical Aspects of the Training that Helped
Now for some juicy bits. I've focused on learning strength-as-a-skill, and I knew I'd need to push my skills to get to 300-then-500 pullups in a day. Specifically, this demanded:
- rejuvenating rest: I needed to rest effectively between sets. I had to recover or I'd burn out! I couldn't tolerate any nervous or anxious thinking or urge to continue, or distracted non-rest (like zoning out in front of a TV that would lead to lethargy).
- body-tension: I practice full-body-tension in my training. Anything less puts substantial strain on the part that's still working (in this case, biceps and shoulders), so I had to be very consistent in my pullups to keep the strain spread out over the whole body rather than concentrated.
- no exhaustion: If I ever hit exhaustion, my recovery time would spike and I'd probably fail to reach my goal. I had to ensure I never approached exhaustion.
- consistency: it's not enough to know good practices, I must do them consistently throughout my training or I'm wasting time and effort. This day-long practice demonstrated my consistency or lack thereof in a way my normal training does not.
Following is list of technical training practices I gave special attention to throughout the day. If I were coaching someone else in this project, I'd include other items for them to consider, so I'll say clearly: this list isn't exhaustive or very detailed. This list is just the set of edges I needed to give special care to; the edges I needed to push to make it to my goal.
Need for relaxation between sets
"Savor the rest" is my motto! Rest isn't 'the time between doing what I want', it's part of the project itself, part of life itself. I practiced enjoying the rest, breathing deeply through the nose, sitting still or moving gently as the desire came to me. Between ladders for the last 150 pullups I did arm circles and jiggled my bicep-muscles to increase blood flow. I practiced feeling everything I could in my body instead of 'powering through' or blotting-out awareness as a way to work through tiredness. Often just putting my attention somewhere - on my back or shoulders or temple - would release tension.
A positive attitude helped. Not an ignore-the-pain kind of fake positivity, but more a relish-the-exhilaration attitude. I could feel my anticipation for the next ladder grow as my muscles and joints recovered each time, moment by moment.
Role of sit-spot / nature connection practices in relaxing
I practiced "owl eyes" and "deer ears" from the Kamana nature connection program. I did most of the pullups in my grandmother's back patio, so there were trees and low plants, birds and insects and a hot sun and dry wind. I practice opening my field of vision as much as possible to sense things in the peripheral area and listening for the quietest sound I can hear. When I notice as much as I can notice this way and really tune in, my facial muscles automatically relax. I did this a few times throughout the day, and going to my sit spot at 9AM and doing this for an hour as I tuned in to the flocks of European starlings, house finches, house sparrows, and robins was wonderfully rejuvenating - I felt fresh as new when I returned even though I'd already done 180 pullups (I snuck in 30 pullups at a playground near my sit spot).
The love I feel for the life all around me when I tune in with these and other Kamana practices really helps me relax in general. More on this in the section on spiritual practices below.
Full-body tension
I often practice the full-body
tension immediately before and after the exercise. For pullups, I pull
the shoulders down with my armpits (lats), tense the abs/lower back,
pinch a coin between my butt cheeks. Those're the basics.
I practice zipping too, which is where you twist each leg into the hip and each arm into its shoulder which helps tremendously: when I
do this right while pulling-up, I have the sense that my butt is pushing the rest of me
up into the air, rather than being pulled by my arms. It's frickin'
awesome!
I commonly practice other max-strength techniques,
including special breathing-strength techniques. However, they didn't seem
helpful today since I was doing many reps of an easier-to-me exercise rather than a few reps of a difficult exercise, so I didn't practice them.
Now, a cool
thing is that after a mini-set or ladder, sometimes I'd feel sore. Often
I realized if I just practiced the full-body tension again while standing on the ground, especially
pulling the shoulders down hard with my armpits, the soreness would
dissipate. And so proper tension was important for both pullups and
rest/recovery! How cool is that?
Body awareness
While I'm pulling up, where do I tense and where not? Where do I want to feel tension (butt, abs, back, lats, diaphragm, pelvic floor) and where not (face/head, neck, biceps, etc)? How's my posture? I noticed sometimes I tensed my abs improperly, bending my belly forward rather than keeping it washboard-flat. How does my tension change during the set? I noticed sometimes I'd start properly tensed, and by the end of a 4- or 5- pullup set in a ladder, I'd have lost the butt-tension and only have the abs/back/lats tension left.
My best form would involve full zipping as described above, with the sense that my butt pushes me upwards. So, I asked: is my butt rocketing me up into space? If not, minimally-proper tension without zipping would still be waaaaay better than using shoulder+bicep power alone, a sure prelude to burnout.
Scanning
Scanning is a key body awareness practice I learned from the Tarahumara through the book Born to Run: I scan the body head-to-toe and sense where I feel tension. I did this at two times, immediately after finishing a mini-set inside a ladder and also during the rest periods between ladders, each time with its own intention.
Immediately after finishing a mini-set inside a ladder (say, between the 4-set and 5-set), I sense where I feel tension. If I feel a vague tension throughout my butt/core/lats/shoulders/biceps, I did good! That means the whole body worked together as an integrated being. If I feel extra tension in my biceps and shoulders, that means I didn't have proper full-body tension, and compensated with my arms/shoulders. This way leads to rapid exhaustion/burnout! So I knew immediately I needed to improve my form. This may also indicate is that I didn't properly pull my shoulders down tight with my lats. The proper feeling is that I pull my shoulders down with my armpits. Disconnected shoulders make for wayyyy harder pullups without any compensating benefit. This tuning-in was very helpful in ensuring I consistently had good form throughout the day.
During rest periods, I likewise scanned head-to-toe. What part of me is resting well, and where am I holding tension? Do I feel any anxious-tension anywhere? How is my posture at rest, and how could I improve it to rest better?
No exhaustion
A key to rapid strength training is never ever get close to exhaustion unless you're doing a test or have some clear need. In normal training, don't do it!
I integrated this pattern in two ways: by spreading my pullups out throughout the day, and by using ladders. As I said above, I decided to do all pullups in a ladder-pattern, specifically a ladder-5. This means I do 1 pullup then pause, then 2 pullups, then pause, then 3, pause, 4, pause, 5, done. Each ladder thus yields 15 pullups, 1+2+3+4+5. This way, I could do 15 pullups quickly without ever getting close to tired. I could easily increase rest-time inside the ladder. I only struggled a few times on the 15th pullup (the last pullup of the fifth set), and I never failed.
Likewise, I spaced out my ladders for maximum recovery. I didn't plan my day in advance (see body-based vs time-based rhythm below). Instead, I sensed when I was ready for another ladder, and didn't start sooner nor delay. Often I felt a giddy excitement for another round, and it was time!
Body-based rhythm, not time-based
I kept an eye on a clock to gauge my progress, but I never went outside "because it's time" (except I kinda rushed to get to 300 before noon, but I consider that poor form!) Instead I sensed my readiness and desire, and proceeded to pull-up only when ready. Sometimes this break was short, as when I did 150 pullups in 1.5-2 hours twice. Later in the day the rest was longer, and I took care not to let ego interfere with the rest I needed. But mostly I enjoyed the rest so much - cleaning, talking with my grandmother, observing the plants and birds, feeling how I felt - that I didn't feel much anxious urge to continue anyway.
I've noticed something amazing: I often feel high when I exercise intensively, a natural high, but I'm too mentally-tensed and focused on the task to notice. When I relax into total body awareness and sensory awareness and savor the feeling of what I'm doing, I often notice I'm actually feeling high and didn't even know it. I definitely notice this pattern with my strength training. I noticed it also doing hill sprints this past winter and spring: I'd get to the top of the hill after a long sprint, turn and start walking downhill, and notice I felt very tense. I started to relax, and then felt really high and blissed out. And I realized this high was there all along, if only I had noticed and opened to it. Likewise, many times I felt a similar bliss related to the pullups yesterday.
Summary
Doing so many pullups in a day confirms that I'm not just getting stronger, but I'm learning the physical, emotional, and spiritual skills of moving with strength, and self-training well. I feel very confident that I could train others who want to grow in this way as well. I like that.
Spiritual Patterns
I'll keep this section short, since I still struggle to put into words many of the spiritual practices and patterns I cultivate in my life. But I'll mention a few things:
Eating
I have many unhealthy relationships with food, including anxious eating and overeating in various forms. I'm learning to recognize and change these patterns, but sometimes it seems a slow process of change indeed!
But not yesterday - yesterday it felt easy to eat exactly as I needed to.
I made a way bigger lunch than I meant to, after just hydrating and not eating all morning. And yet, with all the pullups and the body-awareness practice that required, I felt super connected with my gut (or, my ego-self was well integrated with the whole body), and from the large pot I made a small bowl of food, and ate it, and didn't have a single bite more than I needed to feel simply nourished. Often I eat at least a few bites more than I need, leading to a heaviness or lethargy or bloatedness, but I not only didn't do that today, I didn't even feel tempted. This project pushed me to my physical limits, and it was fully my choice, with no sense of external obligation, so I was fully engaged in a way I'm sometimes not. This combination helped me feel more deeply connected with myself, and made it easier to act from my core.
Opening through closure
I practice something I learned
from David Deida: Open through the closure! I have chronic tension in my
eyes and ears, my jaw, my heart and diaphragm, my shoulders and neck,
and so on. In addition to focusing on one muscle or limb and trying to
relax it, I practice feeling as one body that's
emotionally-and-physically closed. I feel the physical closure, all the particular muscles that feel tense, and sometimes I even feel them heat up with the attention. Then I open through the closure. The
emotional/spiritual opening then happens simultaneously with the physical
relaxing.
I struggle to explain this practice clearly in text form. But here're the changes I experience with it:
- Emotional changes:
a greater comfort in my body, more open-mindedness, a sense of bliss or
a high, a greater sense of connection with the life and world around me, and an
openness to people and the world as they are. I also feel more confident
in myself and more grounded.
- Physical changes:
everything relaxes! Sometimes it takes a bit of time and effort, and
I've never reached total relaxation yet, but many parts of me relax
substantially. Other muscles partially relax and I can feel the residual
tension more clearly as tension and often heat. Some muscles tense more, since my posture always spontaneously (unintentionally) improves, but any new muscle tension always seems healthy with this practice, not the result of unaware anxious patterns.
- Sensory changes:
The world becomes more vivid visually; brighter colors, sharper lines.
My vision becomes more clear. Hearing likewise improves, and I begin to
notice subtle sounds I hadn't noticed a moment before - a motor humming
quietly, birds singing in the far distance. I feel the breeze I'd
unconsciously ignored a moment before, or other body-sensations or
smells I'd not noticed. Often I feel a glow in my heart.
As
you can imagine, this practice helped me relax and recover quickly
between sets, and also helped me enjoy the rest instead of just waiting
for the next set.
Offering my deepest gifts
I began a new practice recently, of offering my pullups and other training as a gift to the world. This combines attitudes I learned from David Deida's teachings with those of natives of the southwest as relayed in Martin Prechtel's books (it's been a long time, and I can't remember their nation's name). But the native people Martin described would run and run and run, and offered their running as a gift to the world; they recognized that their running even helped power the earth and sun. I'm recognizing that just as the birds feeding on the fence or the trees swaying in the breeze are a gift to the universe, so is the prayer of gratitude I offer at my sit spot each day, and so are my pullups. When I offer my pullups as a gift to the universe, I sense my heart open, my eyes and ears relax and take in the world, and my body-awareness increases even more. Everything becomes more vivid, and my focus increases. I disturb the finches and doves and jays less that eat on my grandmother's patio too: I feel more tuned into them and their needs, and they seem to fly away less often or less quickly. And so I love the world more and more with each pullup.
I'm tearing up as I write, even though I'm writing this story for the 3rd time. What a beautiful world this is.
Final Reflections
In my training journals, I always like to summarize clearly what I did well and what I could improve.
Things to improve:
- goal setting: I set a poor goal in a few ways.
- 300 wasn't enough: Superficially, obviously 300 was a poor goal because I reached 500 with energy to spare, so I didn't know ahead of time what would really push my limits. This means I'm not measuring my progress very often. I don't actually mind this much, since my progress still seems real and rapid, and testing often slows progress for a few days (recovery time from exhaustion during a test makes training difficult). But if I'm going to bother setting targets, I want them to push me. I clearly didn't need to train much to reach this goal after first imagining it in May a month ago, so it didn't serve me that much.
- the exercise must test me: Often, I got through a ladder with subprime posture: merely full body tension, no zipping needed, or worse, just tension in the abs/back/ampits and not the glutes. I didn't need full tension, I didn't need zipping, I didn't need breathing-tension or other max-strength techniques because regular pushups in the 1-5 reps range are too easy for me to need those techniques. I want the test to demand my best, or even better than my best, so there's a real risk of failing to reach the goal if I don't integrate every practice I've cultivated into the performance. I felt surprised at how sub-par I could occasionally do pullups and still recover for another ladder within a few minutes throughout the day. This speaks well to my strength and endurance, but poorly to my goal-setting.
- the goal should match the training: I'm doing max-strength training, not strength-endurance training. This challenge was fun, and I'd definitely do it again for fun, but if my intention is to set a goal to motivate my training, I need the goal to be more closely aligned with the training. 5 1-arm pullups by December 31, 2019 would be a better goal than 500 regular pullups. Hmm......
- notice the closing: throughout the day I kept opening in love and awareness and then unconsciously relaxing back into old patterns of emotional dullness, only to finally notice this and open again. While open I felt fully engaged and vibrant and full of energy, even when tired and sore. While closed, I still felt pretty energetic and amped up, but less aware of my self and surroundings and with more mental tension. Rest time was less restful in this way. The constant physical challenge helped me recognize this. I want to notice the moment of closing and open through that, so that I live open continuously.
- don't tolerate partial form: Throughout the day, I often tolerated glutes-abs-back-armpits tension without zipping. If I'd zipped properly the whole time, I'd have felt far more energy and less soreness by the end of the day. I want to only practice excellent technique, not partial technique. Otherwise I'll only achieve partial strength and emotional dullness, and who wants that?!
Things I liked:
- lived the day in prayer: this is the closest I've ever come to living an entire day as a prayer, fully aware and open in love and engaged to give my deepest gifts. I sense I needed the challenge to draw this out of me. I want to live this way always. I suspect I'll be drawing lessons from this for a long time.
- rested well: I rested and recovered well and consistently.
- I did 500 pullups in a day: fuck yeah!
Gratitude
Strength training: Paul Wade, author of Convict Conditioning and Pavel Tsatsouline, author of Naked Warrior. Both offered concrete practices that helped me train far more effectively, safely, and cheaply than I ever had before finding their books. Thanks to them.
Body awareness: Body-based psychotherapists in the Reich/Lowen tradition, including the Gestalt school of body-based psychotherapy have had a big impact on me. Thanks to Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen, as well as the Gestalt contributors (particularly the authors of Gestalt: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality). Michael Samsel of
reichandlowentherapy.org and
http://www.michaelsamsel.com/, as well as Jack Willis who wrote "Reichian Therapy, The Techniques for Home Use" (
free download here). Many thanks.
Spiritual practices separate from nature connection: David Deida through books and recordings of seminars. Thank you.
Spiritual practices through nature connection: Jon Young through his Kamana program and various recordings. Thank you very much.
These are just the people who've influenced my strength training practices, not a complete list of influential people in my life. Many thanks to all these people and those who taught them. I'm integrating their teachings into my strength training and other aspects of my life in ways deeply satisfying and enlivening. Anyone who would like to learn more about these people or their writings or check out their books, just get in touch.
