As as little girl I used to love doing pull ups. I loved them so much that my Dad installed a pull up bar in the hallway for me so that I could do them every day. My personal record as a ten year-old was 17 chin-ups and 15 pull ups, with only a few minute break between.
Then one day, I stopped loving pull ups. I told myself that they got too hard, that I wasn’t able to do them as well, and that I wasn’t strong enough. I have avoided pull ups since, limiting myself to doing assisted ones in any training that I do that requires them.
It’s funny when we believe unnecessary lies and limitations that we told ourselves in our past that we have. So often they are simply not true. On a whim this Tuesday I jumped up on a pull up bar to see if I could do one in my old age of 28. I did four. Then yesterday I did five. These were solid pull ups — no kipping and no kicking, just the most pure form of the exercise itself.
Instantaneously I was ten years old again and on top of the world again with un-knockable confidence. Pull ups taught me this that I need to dig into my past to rediscover that I can actually do anything that I set my mind to. Pull the bar up on the expectations that you set for yourself and stop allowing your mind to tell you what you can and can not do.
As for me, I am now on a mission to beat my 15 pull-up record from 1993. I’ll let you all know when I achieve it.