The Quest for the One-Arm Pull-up

on August 30, 2010

This past weekend I got to learn more about some fellow Paleolites as a part of the most recent event hosted by the Austin Primal Living Meetup Group. The event was billed as a potluck, and though 8 or so people RSVP’ed yes, only three of us were there for most of it. Consequently, in addition to some good Paleo food, I shared some good conversation with Skyler (of skylertanner.com) and his fiancee Sarah for the afternoon.

One of the topics that came up was the One-Arm Pull-up, which despite being self-explanatory, blew my mind when I first heard about it. It was as if I had never even entertained the possibility of such a feat. Yet here was Skyler telling me that this was his goal for the near feature, and that he had recently worked up to the one-arm lockout (hanging with your chin over the bar with one arm in the fully contracted—or “locked out”—position).

Well, I have a little bit of an obsessive personality, and the sound of this challenge was just too much. I decided on the spot that I would attempt this too. And so I asked Skyler for advice on how to work up to it, and got to learn about archer pull-ups and one-handed towel pull-ups in addition to the one-arm lockout. Checking on YouTube for some inspiration, I came across the understandable, the unreasonable, and the completely, insanely ridiculous. Yeah, it’s going to be a long road.

And just to put things in perspective, I decided to try out some of these things I had heard about at the gym today. I’m currently in the middle of a three-week rotation of German Volume Training, so I couldn’t waste too much energy goofing around with these hard exercises, but I do understand now just how difficult the one-arm pull-up is. Before when I was visualizing it in my head, it seemed pretty reasonable, but after attempting the one-arm lockout today, let me just say that I didn’t think I could load my arms so much and still have them stay together.

Archer pull-ups were easy for the most part, although I didn’t lever-disadvantage myself as much as is shown in the video. On the other hand, my lockout attempts all turned into very quick negatives. I felt the load on my biceps, but more surprisingly on my triceps as well, and it was just too much. So that means I have a pretty reasonable short-term goal to chase after my GVT rotation is done: get the one-arm lockout. I’ll let you guys know how it goes.

Addendum: I realized I should probably explain why such a thing appeals to me, in case you didn’t already think I was crazy for several other reasons. Well, number one, I’m crazy. Number two, it’s awesome. And number three, imagine that you got swept up in rapids with a bag containing your most important possessions. Suddenly you see a tree branch downstream and you grab onto it with one hand. Now, if you couldn’t do the one-arm pull-up, you’d be forced to let go of your bag in order to save yourself; however, with the one-arm pull-up you could hold on to your bag and pull yourself out of the water. That’s why.

Wait what was that? You can just throw the bag onto land and pull yourself out with two arms anyway? Oh… Well, may I refer you to number one?