Sweet taste of victory

I did a real chin-up today. Three of them, actually.

Sweet victory. I've been working towards this since I mentioned it a few months ago. Three months! I started by using the lat pull cable machine to mimic the chin-up action, and supplemented that with "negative" reps (jumping up onto the bar, and lowering myself slowly, maxing out the eccentric muscle movement, which is apparently an efficient way to build strength).

Last week, I managed to pull down 5 reps of 120 lbs on the lat pull cable. I knew that adding more weight would equate to pulling my bodyweight, so it was time to go for the real thing.

You may wonder why I'm making such a big deal of this - it's just a chin-up! *I* don't even know why the big deal... Except maybe it's that I haven't had such a precise and specific physical goal before (usually it's just "get better" or "get faster" or something equally unmeasurable and therefore there is no risk of complete failure.) No wait, that's not actually true, I've had race-time goals for half-marathons that I've worked toward achieving. But with running, it feels like you can just push a little harder. I guess this one just seemed way out of my league. I couldn't "just push harder". I had to actually BE strong enough. And strong in a way that I'd never been before. And, come to think of it, I've trained for a chin-up for as long as I ever trained for a half-marathon!

I digress. Back to the story. (See? BIG DEAL.)

All week, I got butterflies going down to the gym. I couldn't figure out why, but I figured out it was because I knew it was time to attempt the first real chin-up -- but I was afraid of trying and failing. That simple. So I put it off. Tuesday, I ran intervals. Wednesday, big leg workout (mini-success: I deadlifted 95 pounds! If I wasn't so bad at math I'd have put the larger-sized plates on the bar and looked like superstar. But alas, I can only count by tens so I used a lot of little plates. Lame.) See, I'm procrastinating again.

Today, I was nervous again knowing I really couldn't delay any longer and today had to be the big day. I ran into Sarah, our fitness trainer, in the change room. She'd been helping me along since the start. I 'fessed up my nerves. She told me to go out there, warm up, and she'd talk me through it.

She did, I did, there were high-fives all around.

I just hope it wasn't some sort of fluke, and I can do it again next week!