I've been meaning to write something about my journey to pull-ups. The end, though, was kind of anti-climatic. One day I thought, hmm, I wonder if I can do pull-ups yet? And then I did some. But let's back up.
I think that my quads and calves were the first part of my body to get strong. My first foray into fitness was running on a treadmill and losing a significant amount of weight as a young teenager (15, I guess). Then I got into dance and kept running. I had really strong legs. Then I injured my back in college and got it back to healthy with Pilates. I got obsessed with the reformer, specifically. When I moved to DC I started doing barre to fill that need. My core got crazy strong; I think my core strength is the most remarkable thing about my fitness profile.
But my upper-body? Terrible. I couldn't even really do push-ups. Barre had a push-ups and weights section, but I never seemed to get stronger. I also didn't necessarily care all that much. At the time fitness was primarily a fun way to not blow up like a balloon (since the other option, eating less frozen yogurt, clearly isn't fun).
Then I got into aerial, and while you don't need much upper-body strength when you start, if you get serious you do. Especially if you get serious about something aside from flying. While basing involves a lot of core strength, my arms (well, back, chest, biceps, triceps, and shoulders) were/are my limiting factor. And they still weren't getting stronger. I resolved a few times to really work on pull-ups, but I never saw any progress.
It's not entirely fair to make it sound like one day I just could do pull-ups. I made some serious changes (that I am just now finally getting to writing about; sorry), but I wasn't focused on pull-ups and I didn't expect to get them so quickly. First, Drew and I did the Gamma round of Focus T25; Shaun T (best known for Insanity) does amazing cardio, but Gamma was his first really strength focused workouts. Then we did Insanity Max 30 (which is probably my favorite workout series ever), and it has strength workouts built into the schedule. They were still cardio-ish, so they were fun, but I actually got stronger. There is an odd tricep focus in them, and all of a sudden I can do tricep pushups. I never could do good ones even on my knees, even though in barre you do them every class.
I wanted to get stronger for specific aerial goals, so I asked Drew to create a regime that would focus on strength but would keep cardio (so I don't go crazy; must have cardio). He reviews and describes it here. The main ingredient is Sagi's Beachbody series called Body Beast. It's all about lifting heavy; there are drop sets and super sets and giant sets, and I sort of feel like a bro when I do it. I don't love the misogynist comments that come up (there are no women in the series, and Sagi will say things like "this is not the girly workout" or derogatorily call one of the guys "barbie"), but I was inspired by the Dumbbells and Diapers blogger. I figured, what's the worst that could happen?
And the answer is, I'd suddenly be able to do pull-ups. On the one hand, this is exciting, but on the other hand it kind of makes me angry. Pull-ups, for whatever reasons, have this reputation as being nearly impossible for women to do, but that's not fair. Fitness is super gendered in ways that mean women don't tend to train in ways that would get them to pull-ups.
Now, I'm not at all saying we should abandon barre and spin for weight lifting. As a joke, Drew and I call it "lady fitness," since it's so silly that there are these types of physical activity seen as just for women (flip side is "guy fitness". But lady fitness is no joke; barre is hard, spin is hard; it's not that lifting is harder, it's just different and gets you to different goals. You don't need those goals, I didn't have them, I didn't train for them, and I couldn't do them. Now I train for them and I can do them, but my first love will always be super intense cardio.
It just drives me crazy, though, that we act like women just can't do something, when the issue is women not training properly because fitness is so gendered (why is everything so gendered?).
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