1,000 Pull Up Challenge - Before and After

My son and I have been doing some pull ups using our monkey bars.  I do sets of ten, he does sets of... actually I don't know how many he does per set.  

We don't go to failure, we aim to do about 50% to 70% of our maximum in each set.  We do a few sets each day and do them most days, and are not really dedicated to it as they are not part of my exercise minimums.  

On the days I work from home my son comes into my room from time to time during the day and asks me to go do pull ups with him.  A set of ten takes me about 15 to 20 seconds to complete, plus walking to/from the back yard, so probably less than a two minute break.  Time well spent.

One day my son came in 8 times, meaning I did 80 pull ups that day.  It was easy enough and I felt fine the following day as I was only doing small numbers.  I didn't 'feel the burn', the next day I felt normal, there was no muscle soreness.  

To build strength, the aim is to train as often as possible while being as fresh as possible.

This got me thinking.  If I had a day at home I could do ten sets of ten and complete 100 pull ups in that day.  If I had a few consecutive days, these numbers would add up fast.  

I had ten days off work over Xmas/New Year, and we were not planning on going anywhere, so I would have access to our monkey bars.  This was an excellent opportunity to do ten days of 100 pull ups every day, which would add up to an enormous one thousand pull ups over the ten day challenge.

Given that most people in this country would not do one thousand pull ups in their life (or even one hundred pull ups in their life) this sounded like an opportunity that was too good to miss!

To keep track of my pull ups I wrote down how many I did after each set on a post-it note.  I had planned on modulating the numbers somewhat, but ended up mostly doing sets of ten.  

Some days my son convinced me to do extra with him after I had reached my daily goal.  That's ok, I would rather do too many than too few.  At the start I did a few sets of 15,  that was too many and I would have been better off keeping the numbers lower.  

Each row were the numbers I completed in each set

I also decided to take some before and after photos of my back.  Some of these I was just standing relaxed, and others where I was flexing.  I was curious to see if there would be any difference after such a short amount of time.

Perhaps ten days is too short to notice any difference, or perhaps the difference would be easily noticeable.  You can find out below.

 

Before the ten day 1,000 pull up challenge: 

My back relaxed - notice the imbalances

My back flexed - before doing 1,000 pull ups over ten days

My back flexed - ignore the weird little scars

After the ten day 1,000 pull up challenge:

Relaxed - imbalances are noticeably reduced

My back flexed - after doing 1,000 pull ups over ten days

After the ten day challenge my lats feel firmer, my forearms feel firmer, my shoulders feel more stable, and I am far stronger, but you can't really see any of that.  

It appears that ten days is not long enough to see a great deal of change.  That's ok with me, I wasn't doing this for visual change, I wanted to get stronger and am glad I completed my challenge.  

Other than being slightly more tanned from having ten days not in an office, you can't see much difference at all.  This challenge was only ten days, so this is not unexpected.

There are some slight differences that can be seen in the photos.  

In the 'before' relaxed photo you may notice that I do not stand straight, I stand slightly twisted to one side.  The 'after' photo I stand slightly straighter.  I didn't know I was doing this until I looked at the photos side by side.  

  

In the 'before' photos my left shoulder is higher than the right due to an old injury.  This causes me a lot of headaches, neck aches, and other pain.  If you look closely at the 'after' photos you may notice that (when relaxed) my left shoulder is now lower, almost the same height as my right shoulder.  Being more balanced means that I am in less pain.  

Less pain is a great result, I'm happy with that!