Sooooo....a little confession. As a follow up to last week's post, I somehow managed to not have to try a pull up at the gym this week with my trainer. I know, I know...you're all disappointed, right? Well, not so fast...last week I was admittedly feeling a little nervous because I had promised Graham that I would attempt a pull up, and to be honest I was shitting myself a little. OK, I was shitting myself a LOT. As you all know I suffer from extreme gymtimidation, so was picturing people all pointing and snickering as I tried to hoist my substantial body weight with these two stick things I call my arms. I was by myself one night last week so thought hmmm...I have a chin up bar downstairs...let me see if I can maybe sort of do one? I slipped downstairs, jumped up to the bar and....
NOTHING.
*@(*(#*(*(!!! I could barely even get myself out of the dead hang position. I tried everything I could to pull myself up but I just couldn't. Blah. Disappointed with myself, I was dreading the next training session because I hate to disappoint others even more and was already envisioning the slightly pitying and somewhat sad look that Graham would flash me when I failed to even budge an inch.
As I headed into my workout on Thursday, I was a feeling a bit worried. We started off with some lower body work, and moved onto supersets of dumbbell chest presses and negative pull ups (which I seriously despise). I think possibly I had built up this week's imminent pull up failure to epic proportions because last week, I had completely sucked at the chest press...I'd been successfully pressing 30 pound dumbbells with each arm so had tried to move up to 35 pounds but couldn't even get the buggers into the starting position. Graham is really good about pushing me so I keep progressing so suggested that we try again...I was a little hesitant but thought about my post from last week...way better to try and suck, then to not try at all, right? So dutifully I tried again and guess what?! I was able to get two sets of six reps! My arms were shaking the whole time and he had to help me a bit but whatevs...I did it! I think the headiness of reaching that next step gave me a buy from attempting a pull up this week, but methinks I may not be as lucky next week. And who knows...maybe I might surprise myself? Here's to hoping.
1 comment:
I'm absolutely, positively convinced that you'll get your pull up eventually. This is coming from someone who has the upper body strength of a runner and couldn't do a push up from her knees, let alone a pull up. I always blamed it on the ape-like length of my arms. My gym coach (many years ago) got me to do those eccentric thingos for weeks and eventually I was able to do a pull up. You'll get there too.
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