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Up in the air again

In January, I resolved to do at least as many pull ups as the day of the month. This was easy on the 1st and 2nd, and gradually harder, but it didn’t get really difficult until a week ago, when I was doing upwards of 20 every day. From then on, every day I’d wake up with sore forearms, and I developed interesting calluses on my hands (much more so on my left than my right).
Today I went climbing, and although I was too tired from yesterday’s hike and thirty pull ups, so I only did 45 minutes of climbing, I still wasn’t fresh, and on return home even a single pull up was hard to do.

On I slogged through the day, three pull ups here, two there, and finally, at 930 this evening I cranked through the last five and I could mark this resolution as done. I’d planned 496 pull ups this month and finished with 505 as a result of going overboard a few times in the month. Tomorrow I take a day off, then it’s twenty every day through February. Hopefully that’s easier than this was…

This probably isn’t the smartest approach to exercise. Periodization tells us to increase the load, then back off to recover, then increase it again, not just make things harder every day. I’m lucky I didn’t burn out this time (last year I failed more spectacularly and didn’t get anywhere near success). Now on to the next big adventure…

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