Finally Pull Ups

I haven’t had the opportunity to do true pull-ups in quite a long while.  Before this recent move, I’d had the home gym setup that I really loved, but the one thing I lacked there was a pull-up bar.  You can always install your own bar if you want, but another strange circumstance followed me over the last 3 places we lived – I did not have a normal fucking doorway in any of them.  In the NYC studio, the only doorways I had were pre-war building style and they were metal. I had one of those Iron Gym pull-up bars that could latch onto a doorframe but when your doorframe is 12″ thick (no lie), it won’t work.  Then we went to Santa Monica and the apartment there had something like inverted doorframes – all the doorframes were set IN from the wall.  So no hooking there.  And finally, in Franklin Hills, the doors there were set into the wall as well without a typical doorframe, so again, no love for hanging the pull-up bar.  Sure, maybe I could have drilled and installed a permanent bar, but then you can’t close the damn door.  So yeah, no pull up bar for me.

In the workouts that I have been using, there are sets for pull-ups and chin-ups, but it also gives you alternates if you can’t do them.  So I did the alternates.  But today, now that we live in a complex with a 2-story gym facility that also includes a pull-up bar, I did pull-ups instead.  Oh GEEZUS.  I could only do 3 during a set, and I think I did a grand total of about 11 all said and done, but I know I am going to be in fucking agony in a day or two when those muscles that had been dormant wake up and yell at me.  I am not looking forward to my arms being immobile.  But I know that doing actual pullups are quite amazing for your body.  So bring on the tanktops…..in a few months or years.