I did 10 pullups in a row on my 32nd birthday!

Dear /r/bodyweightfitness,

Last Friday was my 32nd birthday, and I gave myself the ability to do 10 pullups in a set! :)

Lately, I've been frustrated that I'm not making any progress with my pullups. A common set of pullups looked like 7-4-1, or 6-3-2, or something like that. My absolute max was 8 pullups - always followed by a steep decline.

I stumbled across a video by /@fromgenesistorevelation a while back and was immediately hooked by the idea and decided to try to do 10 clean pullups in a set for my 32nd birthday.

Here is the video:

I started lightly with 4-3-2-1 pullups two months ago and continued to add one pullup per session (~4-5 sessions per week): 4-3-2-2, 4-3-3-2, 4-4-3-2, 5-4-3-2, 5-4-3-2-1, ... (max 5 sets).

On my 32nd birthday I did 42 pullups: 10-9-8-8-7

Admittedly, I neglected most other exercises for this little project, doing only occasional dips and pushups. I also increased the rest time as I progressed and had up to 6 minutes rest on Friday, but I did it!

I'll hold on to the routine for a bit now and try to decrease rest time while maintaining (and improving) form aiming for sets of 10-10-10 or something like that while incorporating some more diversity into my workouts again.

This community has been a good place for me to come to whenever I looked for advice and fresh input and it didn't fail me. I'm feeling stronger than ever at 32 and will continue to progress.

Thanks for reading my blog, I guess, and have a great day!

Note: I religiously warmed up my wrists and shoulder before every session, doing up to 32 reps of each warmup.
 
@looktohim I never did proper strenght training in my 20s but I feel like sticking to the programme and being mindful to eat enough I was mostly able to add one rep each session with relative ease! I'd even say my gains in strength are higher now than they were in my 20s.

e: typo
Granted, I'm pretty slim..
 
@composerusa I would recommend doing this program... It's called the Russian fighter pull-up program(if you want to look up more about it). If your first week starts with 6 reps on the first set, your 5th week would start with 10 reps on the first set.
 
@composerusa I started 8 weeks before my birthday with 4-3-2-1.

So if 6 is what you can do cleanly, you should start with 6-5-4-3-2 and add from the back, you'll be at 10 soon, like @followchristianity writes!
 
@jessicarobertso07 Great job! I just turned 32 a few weeks ago, and I took up bouldering earlier this year so I got pretty good at pullups but I don't know how many I can do exactly. Now you gave me something to work towards :)
 
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