It has been exactly one week since I started the 30-day pull-up challenge until Christmas, and I feel great! I managed to complete the whole workout three times during this first week (all details on the workouts can be found in my original post linked above). Since I had no idea how hard these workouts are going to be, I did the first session right before I went climbing in the gym.
This felt surprisingly good, the exercises were challenging but I still felt like I did get in a decent climbing session afterwards. Since to combination of doing the workout and bouldering afterwards seemed to work fine, I followed this approach for the whole week.
A few things I noticed:
- I was extremely glad, that I ordered three different types of the fitness bands for the assisted pull-ups, because I can easily adjust the amount of resistance/ assistance I want to have in each exercise or even switch between sets.
- I did not notice a substantial negative impact on my bouldering after completing the workouts. On Sunday we even added a few circuits on the spray wall at the end of our session. If nothing else, the proper warm-up you get with the pull-up workout might have led to slightly better performance during the bouldering session.
- However, I was clearly much sorer the next day which is to be expected if you put your muscle groups through this very targeted intense training.
- Having a suffer buddy helps! Luckily, my husband joined my 30-day challenge right away and since he usually pushes himself pretty hard, this motivates me to push hard as well.
I am very motivated to keep going and I’m already thinking about what challenge might come next.