I’ll admit that I have a guilty pleasure when it comes to reality television- a gigantic, steaming pile of shit called Battle of the Fittest Couples. It’s a fucking train wreck, basically a combination of that NBC show STRONG and Jersey Shore– gone are all of the sob stories, and in their place you’ve got insanely hot, buxom cunts batting eyelashes bigger than fucking bat wings at the oily fuckwit boyfriends as they flex and get drunker than freshman sorority girls (on six fucking shots) between competing in fun-looking lifting challenges.

To give you an idea of exactly how nearly incomprehensibly douchey these people are, the show is hosted by a couple of dipshits who met on The Bachelor. We’re talking people who could walk into a Sephora and be utterly reviled for their insincerity and superficiality, because these self-absorbed Instagram superstars are too good for the plebes they find in a brick-and-mortal retail establishment. Nevertheless, it’s entertaining as hell to leave on in the background as I write, because it’s a bunch of hot yet shockingly stupid people lifting and attempting (and failing hilariously) to strategize with and against one another.

Frankly, I have no idea how people like this even exist, but I’m certain Tara and I would be escorted off the set of this show in handcuffs covered in blood (though it seems these days that’s how most of my social interactions are going to go). Nevertheless, the most entertaining part of the first episode was a pullup competition between two guys who were both under 200 pounds, neither of whom could do twenty consecutive pullups. A competition between a CrossFitter and a fitness model ended in a dual defeat, and that stuck me as bizarre- there’s not been a time in my adult life, outside of directly after my bicep surgery, that I could not do twenty consecutive pullups… and I am hardly a natural athlete. I simply do the fucking work.

This guy, however, made it look like the first ten were difficult and the remaining seven were a fucking trial of Hercules.

That said, it seems like there are a lot of people who have no idea how to get good at pullups, and me repeatedly typing “JUST DO FUCKING PULLUPS” doesn’t seem to drive the point home. And that is literally all you need to do- set a goal for a number of pullups and do sub-maximal sets until you reach that number. I can do sets of ten endlessly, and do on days when I don’t feel like dragging my ass down to the gym.

Everyone has an individual comfort level for this sort of thing, and anyone who tells you they know what yours might be is talking out of his or her proverbial ass. For me, I can do thirty pullups at a go most days, without kipping. They’re not dead hang or strict, but I’m not kipping either. I’m just doing pullups, and I don’t give a sloppy, wet, fuck what the internet thinks about form, kipping, ROM, or anything else- this is about volume, not about minimizing the criticism of faceless online strangers.

To wit, I did this rather unimpressive set of pullups after an hour and a half of doubles on Pendlay rows yesterday to elucidate my point. And I’ll admit, half the reason I posted this is I look big as fuck at the end.

So, with 30 as my “max,” I do sets of ten. I’ve tried every other number from 8-20, and ten is the most comfortable and repeatable. I don’t want to struggle doing these- this is honestly more like jogging than it is like lifting. From there, the world is your oyster as far as setting up how you want to train, but I always do my pullups at home so I can spread them out over time if I want.

I’m not telling you that ten is your magic number. I’d say somewhere between a quarter and a half of your max is ideal, depending on your personal muscular strength/endurance balance. And your AMRAP will improve over time due to the volume you do, regardless of the rep number you choose.

This methodology arose out of hanging out during the summers with my training partner. We worked at the same place, so afterwards we’d lift and run, and if we were playing video games or whatever in the evening we’d randomly throw in pullups and pushups because we liked to compete at everything, all the fucking time. It didn’t matter if we were playing Tiddlywinks or benching 225 for reps- he and I competed at literally everything. So, when we weren’t seeing how obnoxious we could be while flashing our abs like douches to pick up chicks, we were finding ways to test our relative physical prowess against one another.

The point is not to run a clinic on form- it’s to do fucking pullups. Ignore literally everything anyone on the internet ever says, because if they were actually lifters they’d be lifting, not discussing it on the internet.

We’d both run the 100, 200, and 4×100 in track, so we were used to using interval training to build up our endurance and muscular endurance. That translated into our strength training, as we started using a lot of what amounted to rest pauses, though it was really just born out of a desire to make the other guy look like a pussy for resting too long. Eventually, we settled into a rhythm in which we’d do an easily repeatable set of something, rest a short while, and go again, endlessly.

Sidebar: One such exercise we called handoffs, but are apparently known on the internet as buddy curls. The late body mod phenom Rich Piana was apparently a fan of them, and filmed himself and a partner busting them out here. If you’ve never tried them, you should- they’re fun as hell. All you need is a person with a relatively similar level of bicep strength and about six square feet of space, plus a cambered bar loaded with whatever you want to curl.

In high school, we’d called this “fart licks” and held endless debates about which famous chick’s ass most needed eating, the name of the methodology we’d been is called Fartleks, and it’s unlike the HIIT and Tabata bullshit to which you’re accostomed- in spite of what you might see from the 20 year olds on Youtube, four minutes is not getting it done when it come to vertical rowing. Fartlek means “speed play” in Swedish, and involves alternating bouts of sprinting with jogging to quickly increase your endurance. Not only does this work fucking wonders for your mile time (spend a month sprinting the straights and doing the “airborn shuffle” on the curves of your local high school track, a mile at a go, and do at least five miles a week like that, and you will see your mile time get seriously respectable without having killed yourself to do it), but it works amazingly for pullups as well.

I do believe we have a prime candidate for fart licks.

The terms “jog” and “sprint” are completely ambiguous terms, so this method is so scalable it’s fucking ridiculous- it doesn’t matter what your ability is, because you will always have a “sprint” and a “jog” pace with whatever you do.

With that said, if you can’t do a pullup yet,

  • do 10×3 negatives on pullups three times a week for a month- you’ll be able to do pullups for reps at the end, and then you can start doing this sort of thing.
  • do not use bands or machines to help you do pullups- that shit is not a training wheel, but rather a tricycle. You will never be able to do pullups on your own with that weaksauce horseshit, so just do the fucking negatives and be sore and grow.
  • don’t be a pussy. Do the fucking negatives.

Our coach used a methodology like the one in this image for the sprinters. Middle distance (400m-800m) had their own intervals, and then the milers had their own.

I realize that the above varies the ranges on the work and rest, but the gist of it is that the effort is submaximal, repeatable, and characterized by rest periods that basically match the effort periods. I’m not too wedded to timers, however, and follow the sprint the straights/slow jog the curves methodology more closely here. The point, however, is not to ape my methods exactly but to find your own way- this just gives you a starting place.

Option 1: A Day of Pullups

You can do this sober, drunk, or blazed out of your mind, and any which way you do it, it rules. On a day I’m not planning on hitting the gym I might kick off the morning with 50-100 pullups, then do pullups randomly throughout the day thereafter. This means during commercials, between rounds of Call of Duty, as breaks from writing, or just because I feel like it, I’ll crank out a set or two or ten throughout the day. In total I’ll do somewhere between 300 and 2000 pullups, and I’ll be sore as fuck for days after. I don’t track the numbers because I don’t give a fuck what the number is- what matters is I did a shitload of pullups, not how many of them I did. I don’t need a number for bragging rights, because my back gives me all the bragging rights I need. Also, no one really gives a shit how many pullups anyone can do unless the answer is “very few.”

Option 2: The Burst

Usually this is a max reps in 30 minutes sort of thing. I’ll throw on a podcast and lose myself in it as I do sets of 10 reps with a break between to grab a drink of water, shake out my arms, and walk down the hall and back. I think my record for this is 372, but I generally don’t bother counting. This results in similar soreness to Option 1.

Option 3: The Goal

Simple- set a daily or weekly goal, and achieve it. There’s some challenge going around with a preposterously low number of daily pullups in a year. Like 10 a day. I’ve no fucking clue what the point of ten pullups a day is, beyond just jerking yourself off for having done a dumbass challenge. Ten pullups won’t do shit. At the very, very minimum, do 200 pullups a week if you want to have a badass back at some point.

It doesn’t really matter how you do them, so long as you pullups. Kip em? I don’t give a fuck- eventually you’ll start doing strict ones just for fun. Shitty ROM? It’s better than doing them with the bitch band or the fucking elevator machine. At some point your ROM will lengthen as you grow stronger.

You’re a motherfucking great ape. Act like one.

There is no reason to be alive if you cannot do a few pullups.

Just remember, every now and again, fart licks go sideways on you. Forewarned is forarmed.

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