Getting ready for uneven pull-ups

For a while I’ve been meaning to add some grip work into my routine, specially since I’ll be starting with uneven pull-ups by the end of the month, but I’m too lazy to dedicate time to grip work alone since I’m still exploring the big six.

I thought about doing it along with my pull-ups but I’m afraid it may take focus away from the exercise and end up holding back my progress, so what now?. By the picture below you may guess what was the answer for me.

Today I combined hanging leg raises with grip work and it seemed to work great for me. The time it takes me to do a set of leg raises seems to be just perfect for grip work and I can focus on my leg raises just fine.

I know it’d be better to hang on one arm only but this will be my starting point, perhaps in the future when I’m more advanced on my pull-ups I can use it there too.

Workout log sheet & web log

Today I was thinking how nice it would be to have my logs on my blog as organized as I keep them on my log sheet:

So far I was making a new post for every new workout but today I decided to change that… I deleted all the workout entries and created a new page called Log (found at the top menu) with a very similar structure to my workout sheet.

Well, I better finish today’s workout :)

Free-standing pull-up bar

A couple of days ago while doing pull-ups I was thinking how good it’d be to have an actual pull-up bar instead of using the one that sticks on the door frame. After checking how much I’d spend to make a very simple one, well… I made it:

In total I spent less than US$40, US$28 on two 30mmx40mmx2mmx6m square steel tubes plus a piece of a rounded one, and the rest between the electrodes for welding and a painting brush. Luckily I had some paint and also a neighbor with a welding machine (and spare steel to practice welding).

I’m quite happy with it, the base is 1.10 m long so it’s quite stable, also the height is perfect for me with 2.25 m. Learning to weld was really fun (altough it’s easy to realize it takes a lot of practice to get good at it).