I'm inching in the right direction, friends. On Thursday I did a platform-assisted pull-up with 20 pounds offset, and it was hard but not bonkers-hard. Today I thought I'd try one with 10 pounds offset, and...close but no cigar.
Here is a weird thing I am noticing: when I try these single reps at or near my limit (is "single reps" an oxymoron? what do you call it when you're only aiming to do one because you know you can't do a whole set?), I feel it most in my triceps afterward. This is weird, because triceps don't have much of a job to do when you're completing the first part of a pull-up. Are my triceps working hard to keep me from plummeting to the ground afterward? Are they over-engaging to try to stabilize my not-yet-up-to-the-task biceps?
Do I have any women readers who do pull-ups? Have you experienced this? Joe is a little puzzled about why my triceps are more grumbly than my biceps or lats after these max-effort attempts.
(I guess I don't have to restrict this question to women, but it seems pretty certain that all the men who read here started their pull-up training with bigger biceps than mine.)
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