I have said from the beginning that I had no idea how I was supposed to do 10 pull ups in a year. The truth of the matter is that I’m not actually sure if I can do 1 pull up in 10 years. I am going to try it anyway.
So, why am I pursuing this entirely impossible goal while almost certainly abandoning the bicycling challenge? Good question. I’m glad I asked.
I am pursuing the pull ups for the following reasons:
It is not a financial drain. Doing bodyweight workouts at home costs me nothing.
The benefits of improving strength will reap dividends even if I “fail” at completing this challenge.
I am a cantankerous and spiteful man, and nobody tells me what I can or can’t do. ̶E̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶m̶e̶.̶ Especially me.
Let me talk about each of these points a bit further.
Eventually I may need to get a pull up bar. Unfortunately, because I exceed the maximum weight for them, I will not be able to purchase one of the doorway-mounted models. I am not sure where (or how) I would install one of the wall/ceiling mount ones. I would probably need to buy a fitness tower, and those start at about $100-150. There would probably be a not-insignificant amount of money to buy a good padded surface to put it on so that it does not slide around on the eccentrically lain, crooked ceramic tiles downstairs. Also, I do not have unlimited space downstairs, and there is the very concern that I am purchasing a very heavy and expensive clothes rack.
The more traditional treadmill clothes rack.
The good news is that I would not need a fitness tower until I can do at least one pull up, so it ain’t exactly an urgent purchase.
To my second point. In my mind, I am not a big man. At least not nearly as big as I actually am. I am always unpleasantly taken aback when I see my reflection in a mirror or when I come across pictures of me—especially those taken by others. There are guides online to taking flattering photos of bigger folks. If you wish to take pictures that don’t make your fat friends want to crawl into a hole, check one out.
I know it’s me, I’m not deluded or anything. But in order for me to not be in a constant state of anxious self-loathing, I have adopted a defense mechanism that allows me to be (most of the time) in public as a grossly overweight man. I just think of myself as average-sized until I am in a situation where I am forced to grapple with my size. In a crowded room, at a cafe with spindly furniture, or a bar or restaurant that only has tall chairs or booths etc.
Welcome to our restaurant. We hate you. We also don’t have plates. Only floor tiles.
This tactic doesn’t always work, and there are some serious failures. For instance, I had a car for a couple of years, and when I went back to riding public transit, my ability to ride without mental anguish was utterly gone. I spent the entire time I commuted on the Blue Line in a state of near panic. Especially on crowded trains where I have to stand—which was almost always the case riding from where I lived and worked. On the times that I was able to find a seat, I would (much to the consternation of my physical therapist) injure my shoulders making a straightjacket of my hands, in order to pull them in to be smaller. Katie helped me (mostly) break this habit by showing me how little room it created. She convinced me that the half of a centimeter of room created was not worth pain that the injuries to my shoulder caused. She told me that I need to take up as much room as I need to be comfortable and safe. I have mostly followed this advice, but when I am feeling especially self-conscious on a crowded bus or train, I still find myself pulling those shoulders in. Moving near a Brown Line station toward the end of the line has ameliorated this somewhat, because at least one of the half dozen or so single chair seats is usually available when I ride toward The Loop. I get to take up enough space to be Jeremy-sized, and I love it. I will probably always try to make myself smaller, but I am trying to be more comfortable in the body that I actually have.
I have to go through the full grieving process of knowing that I will never have the body I dream of.
Ever.
I played football in junior high, and part of high school, and I was introduced to the weight room in seventh grade. It was not a meet cute. I could not do one dip, one pull up, and my bench press was among the lowest. I was bad at literally everything, everything except the leg press. There I excelled. I could lift the second highest amount of weight on that one, second only to my friend Richard who was even bigger than I. We bigguns do often have strength to spare from carrying all our extra weight. Silver linings, I suppose. Other than the leg press I absolutely hated weight training. And not just because I am pathologically averse to physical exertion. Nor can it be blamed entirely on my utter distaste for situations where I’m not immediately good at things. Though that is definitely a large part of it. When I was growing up, the body that most guys I knew wanted was the huge-muscled slab of beef that Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Hulk Hogan made hugely popular.
The last thing I ever wanted to be was “pumped” à la this guy:
Sorry, Guv’nor
I would have traded bodies with Mr. T in a heartbeat, though:
James “Clubber” Lang was a much better role model than Rocky. Fight me.
I have always been ambivalent toward weight training because of my utterly false belief that it will make me even bigger. Intellectually I know that muscle is denser than fat, and will therefore take up less space, but that does not mean that my innermost self actually believes it. At the risk of sounding nuttier than a fruitcake, one of the chief reasons I have never wanted to get really strong was because to do so would be to admit to myself that my ideal body type was actually unattainable; even though I know it is.
I always wanted to be a whippet-thin and pasty like a British rock star. Think Jimmy Page with far less crushed velvet, or the entire lineup of The Kinks. If I was to make a wish and wake up and have any body I wanted, I would wake up in the body of David Bowie’s Thin White Duke, though Jareth would also work.
I would settle for a slightly below average weight viscount, honestly.
Every year I hear the siren’s song to try to lose a lot of weight. And most years I try to. Within a month or two, I am about twenty-five pounds lighter and utterly miserable. The tracking of food has become a really shitty part-time job, and I am constantly fatigued, hangry and spacey. It turns out my body doesn’t like being starved, even when it is on purpose, and there are more than enough calories to sustain life. Yet the urge to try another diet or eating plan or regiment etc. is strong.
I am ignoring this urge indefinitely. A lot of what I am trying with these challenges is to make myself see reality and not the distortions I am prone to. My distortions usually tend toward making things seem worse than they actually are, but not when it comes to weight loss, where I am frankly panglossian in my delusion. I have to actually face facts: I have a 3% chance of successfully losing and keeping off even a small amount of weight for five years. For comparison: the survival rate for metastatic lung cancer over the same timeline is 5%. Those are terrible odds, and I despise gambling of any sort. After all, there is a 83% chance of successfully playing Russian roulette, but that percentage is still way too low for me. For once, I’m not going to take the fool’s bet.
If I’m not going to go on a diet, what am I going to to do? I am going to get hecking strong. I’m going to continue my push-up regimen and I just added a wall squats program. As I get stronger and more confident I will be adding more bodyweight exercises, and hopefully getting stronger. I am always going to be a fat guy, I may as well be the strongest and healthiest one I can possibly be.
A lot of why I chose this ridiculously hard goal was to tell my fear and shame-based inner self to brace for some hard times and to get ready to rebel with all his power. Let him scream, cry, and hold his breath, throw the biggest tantrum imaginable to let me know that he’s the real boss. But he’s not. My fear response may be the strongest part of my brain right now, but it does not have to be. I can make changes, and fuck if I’m going to let anyone tell me that I can’t—especially me.
As for this immediate goal, I need to find an exercise that uses the same muscles as the pull up—I think that the towel row is a good candidate, but I am not sure if I have a pole in my house or not. I sit typing this on my Hackintosh in a busy Starbucks. I am not generally a write in public type of guy, but circumstances demand it. You see, I forgot to put down in my calendar that ComEd is replacing the transformer behind our apartment. We were given plenty of warning—I definitely recall getting an email saying that this was coming. Yet I forgot. You see why I reached out for insight and help finding solutions from you all where organization is concerned. Speaking of that, the response has been great. Some of you I have written back, but I will get around to all of you that wrote with organization and workflow ideas as soon as I can. Just know that I appreciate you all taking the time to drop me a line. Speaking of, my email is below.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
Drop me a line: jeremydnichols@gmail.com
Follow me on Twitter: @jeremydnichols
Follow me on Instagram: @germynickels
My PayPal: paypal for Jeremy Nichols