More First Female Chin Ups & Re-Thinking When You’ve ‘Mastered’ A Move

It was the late great Charles Poliquin who always said the measure of a coach was their ability to take a female from not being able to do a chin up, to being able to do multiple chin ups.

I recall many moons ago now, reading and hearing this ethos and trying to assess the difficulty in my head of such a process. At the time I had no real world experience and was new to the industry. But what I did know was it wasn’t common at all to see any of the PTs in the commercial gym I worked in, taking an untrained (or trained) female from zero chin up strength, to success.

As the years rolled by I eventually achieved this holy grail and then repeated it various other times, before bettering it by helping a female achieve her first STRICT ring muscle up just recently. That was NEXT LEVEL for me, in terms of pride and how uncommon it is.

But even more recently I have helped another client of mine achieve the chin up milestone….

And as you can see, she didn’t just get one all-out grinder of a rep. She was able to repeat it for 3 sets of 1 rep, with each rep being far from an all-out grinder!

Well done Sarah!

You were consistent, patient and trusting in the process. You allowed me to guide as much as needed but you asked the questions you needed to, and showed up and did the essential homework yourself, too. In these cases you deserve all you get and more.

But this got me thinking…

What is real ownership of a move? When can you truly say you have it?

I’ve seen countless Instagram posts of guys & girls getting their first ring muscle ups, maybe even just first pull/chin ups or even dips, and it’s taken them 5 seconds of struggling, kicking and chicken-winging (one elbow up before the other; GROSS) to get through the transition, to then not turn the rings out at the top of the rep (a no rep)…

Or their ‘first’ pull up/chin up isn’t from a dead hang; the arms are kinked and the legs kick as the neck extends to allow the chin to just clear the bar. Then they can’t get near another rep for at least a week, and even then the rep is the same as it was last time.

‘Why have you got to be such a negative hater?!’

You may whine…

But should you really count this as having the rep?

No. Not at all. As Sarah’s story shows: when we attempted the chin up we not only got it, but it was easy and repeatable.

This gives a solid platform to add reps faster without overreaching. Whereas in the classic cases above you will always see the fateful dip and lull, where they can’t get the rep again before having to keep training the same way, hoping to get that day in the sun, where conditions are perfect and the roll of the dice comes up with your numbers.

I guess we could summarise by saying this is yet another case for taking more time to test and get to a goal, such that when you do it it’s not a true max and it just happens. Accordingly, you don’t get the over-adrenaline of hyping up for something you’re not sure you can do, and should you fail it, your ego can be crushed and the disheartening effect is equally crushing.

This is a very similar philosophy to my daily practice experiment I embarked on over a year ago now. Where I wanted to lower the effort needed to do things that I could do, but was sick of them feeling laborious and needing to be in fine fettle to do them well. So I slowly devised a daily routine that I subsequently built out over time, to improve all facets of my physical capacity. Be it flexibility, strength and skill.

The daily practice (which I plan on writing in detail about soon) has transformed my ‘B game’; my level where if you to pull me out of bed at 3 am and force me to show you a move, I could. And I could show it well. Not need a lunar eclipse and the perfect bloodwork that night to just about manage it.

The takeaway here is forgetting about exact targets and instead, focusing on spending longer before labelling yourself as ‘graduated’. By doing this you will find you can randomly try something with no pressure on it, and do it anyway, minus all the over-stimulation of both your nervous system and your joints, because by getting it easier, you stress everything less and most importantly, you can do it in normal, almost mundane circumstances.

This is true ownership of something, redefined and defined once and for all now.

If your coach is bombarding you with all out tests and telling you you’ve got your first muscle up, pull up or dip and yet you read this and sheepishly identify with the criteria I outlined, you need a safer and better coach.

Join the dozens of guys and girls across the world, getting stronger each phase, truly unlocking movements (like Sarah), while feeling and moving better all the time. Shoot me an email (straighttalkingfitness@gmail.com) and we can get started!

Who knows what you could achieve in 3-6 months from now?