Reaching goals...

...it's always good to score ey? I've reached my training goals in 3 months :)


I told you back in February that one of my goals for the Summer was to be able to do 'real' push-ups, feet together, chest to ground with perfect technique....I am happy to report that I can now do 10 of these :)  Obviously I will build on this as there are so many advancements to the basic 'push-up' but am so happy to be able to belt out the 10 'real' basic ones!

...like so :)

My second goal was to be able to do a 'pull-up' (the best exercise for strength) as you're lifting your own body weight. As these are hard, very hard to do, and especially for us females who naturally don't have the upper body strength that our men do, I had to start training to do 'chin-ups'.  The difference between a 'pull-up' and a 'chin-up' is the positioning of the hands on the bar.  'Pull-ups' have a wide forward hand grip, requiring a lot of back strength, whereas the 'chin-up' has a closer grip with palms towards you so you get to use your biceps and back.

I had to start with eccentric 'pull-ups' which means instead of starting at the bottom of the move, I start at the top and lower myself down very slowly over a certain amount of seconds.  Obviously, the slower the better and you're easing your body weight down with your back and arms!  When I started, it was 8 seconds from top to bottom...now I'm at 30 seconds.  Yesterday, for the first time, I attempted and I did 2 'chin-ups'.  Not very impressive you may think, but until you've tried it, you won't appreciate how much strength is needed to achieve this.  I must confess, with all this back and upper body training, my shoulders and back are looking 'very well'. I'm building lovely definition in my Lats (large back muscles).  This is all thanks to the 'push-ups' and the eccentric 'chin-up' training :)

end phase of eccentric 'chin-up'..

'pull-up'..THIS is what I want to be able to do ;)

So here I am smiling at my achievements :)  Early stages but I have the (pardon the pun) back broken of both exercises.  All I need now is to 'change my grip'..(easier said than done) with the 'chin-ups' and increase my 'reps' of both exercises (1 movement through its positive & negative phase) and in time 'sets' (number of reps).

Set a goal, set a date and work to it. 

If you do, you'll get there.

Soooo, have you any goals?
Would love to hear from you..