2,409 Chin-Ups in 12 Hours

by Jason Armstrong

I did not take steroids nor have I ever. In fact, for the 6 months preceeding the event, I did the exact opposite. To lose weight (I was around 195 then), I went on a strict vegetarian diet, and stopped consuming any synthetic protein supplement. I also stopped lifting weights and swimming. I stopped lifting to try to lean down some (even lost muscle is less bodyweight to pull up) and stopped swimming because it was too fluid of an exercise and doing such large numbers of pull ups would require a very mechanical form, each pull up being exactly the same as the last to help prevent injury. By my first trial run at this event, which was performed at my house on July 8th of this year, I was down to 183 pounds and broke the record unnoficially by doing 2,228 pullups and chinups.

My initial philosophy was that to train for an event like this, I needed quantity, not quality, but I soon learned that even the slightest drop in quality or care could cause a serious injury, and I started training for more quantity and quality. Most days I would just do a pull up workout, or a pull up workout and a light calistenics workout. I would do anywhere from 200-700 pull ups a day at a pace anywhere from 8/minute down to 3/minute. A typical workout would consist of 100 warmup pull ups and then 4 pull ups per minute for 2 hours. I would never do sets of more than 6, as I couldn't do a clean set of 6 with good form by the end of 2 hours, and I wanted to finish with everything looking exactly the same as when it started: Effortless and Confident. Most sets consisted of 3 or 4, the numbers which I found to work the best for me, even though most people (including my father who also set this record once) find sets of 5 to be optimum. I would walk briskly in between sets to build up a strong long-term cardiovascular endurance, the type I would need during the 12 hour record break. I always trained without gloves, attempting to build up as much callus as possible and knowing that even gloves wouldn't save me from anything over 1500 pullups so I might as well just take it like a man during training and get used to it.

Many top fitness experts have theorized that training for such intense long distance endurance events will detriment strength and speed. This is very true. The only way to train for something like this (atleast to my knowledge, A.K.A. the current best in the world's knowledge) is to perform massive amounts of repetitions every single day. However, training like this does not allow the muscles enough time to recover to build up any and increase in strength. When I started my training, I could do about 40 consecutive pull ups easily, after 6 months of it, I could only do about 25, so be careful if you choose to follow the path of an endurance athlete.

Another theory is that tall people are bad at pull ups. I also found this to be somewhat true. At 74 inches of height, I have an incredibly long distance to lift myself on every pull up. My stroke is approximately twice the length of my father's and it is because of this that I have had to train so much harder to excel at pull ups than he did. Weight is also an important factor. Even if you are under 5% bodyfat (about what I am), 183 pounds is still 183 pounds, and after 2,405 pull ups, its about 1,830 pounds.

I have always admired the dead, expressionless faces gymnasts use during their routines and have trained myself to not show emotion while I workout, even when it really hurts. This is probably what made the pull ups look so effortless. I also came to be extremely resilient after acquiring so much endurance, and found that even a 2-3 minute rest could fully rejuvenate me for several hours, so it was easy to keep my body looking strong for every pull up as well, as I had almost all of my strength restored and available for every pull up.


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