October 7, 2007 will go down in history as the day I, Chatty Cha, did a pull-up. Unassisted, no help from anyone. Just me. My parents were in town and I was showing off. We have a pull up bar in the door jamb of one of our rooms, and my dad was observing it, not quite sure what it was, maybe. So it was one of those “Dad, look what I can do! Lookit me!” kinds of scenes. Apparently that doesn’t end when you’re 8. Anyway, there I was, doing a pull up. Kind of shocked me so I ran over to the husband to tell him. Later on when we broke it down I admitted to a few cheats (no, my trainer did not give me “the clear“). First, I used an underhand grip, i.e. my palms are facing towards me. That’s an easier grip. Two, my legs are usually behind me, but on this particular day they were sort of in front of me and the husband acknowledged that this is another cheating technique. So? Fine.

The next day, I showed off to the husband (“Honey! Look at me! Look what I can do! Are you watching? Look Look Look). And I did another one. Woohoo. But the husband looked at me and asked, “Did you jump a little bit? Give yourself some momentum?” So what? Ok. So one more cheating tactic on my sole pull-up of the day.

I’m still pretty excited. I credit this summer’s workouts, including the summer-long gym membership, the changes in the plan as I began to incorporate Kate’s circuit-like schedule, and plus, well, the cheating. But just a little bit. I’m working on some improvements. Call it Pull Ups v1.1