M2M Day 293: “Go, Max… GO!”

This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For August, my goal is to complete one continuous set of 40 pull-ups.

Today, I once again maxed out at 32 good pull-ups (plus, an additional two questionable ones).

Although I was still a little sore today, I had no problem breaking the 30 pull-up mark. In fact, I’m at the point now where I’m expecting 30 pull-ups every time, and measuring my progress only on the incremental pull-ups past that point.

This is great progress purely from a mental standpoint: Only last week, I was measuring my progress relative to 20 pull-ups.

Physically though, I can still make some improvements:

1. Although my form is much better today (than my form from two days ago), I’ve returned to rounding my shoulders, rather than pointing my chest at the bar, which is putting unnecessary strain on my arms. I should try to shift most of the work back to my back.
2. It seems like I’m lifting my head much further above the bar than is necessary. I should experiment with shortening my range of motion at the top, and increasing it slightly at the bottom.

Other than that, I’m feeling pretty good and mostly on track. I’m hoping to break 35 pull-ups in the next couple of days.

Read the next post. Read the previous post.

Max Deutsch is a product manager at Intuit, the creator of Somebody.io and Rightspeed, and the guinea pig for Month to Master.

If you want to follow along with Max’s year-long accelerated learning project, make sure to follow this Medium account.