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Wellness Wednesday for July 26, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I'm stuck at nine pull-ups. To be more precise, I got to 8-8-8, flipped one over to 9-8-7, and got stuck. My next steps were going to be 9-8-8, 9-9-8, 9-9-9 and then finally 10-9-8, but I am totally fatigued at the end of each set and can't crank out one more rep beyond 9-8-7.

Any advice? Will lifting straps help? Any additional exercises to build up endurance? Or should I do like six sets of six pull-ups for more volume? What does the athletic motte say?

How long have you been stuck for? It's not uncommon to hit a plateau you can't immediately break through but if it's being going on for a few weeks despite sufficient rest that's the time to think about switching things up.

A month.

That's long enough where you might want to switch things up. I haven't had to work through a pullup plateau specifically but the general method is to do related exercises that work the same muscles but stress them in different proportions to the lift you're struggling with.

Your back might be strong enough to do more pull-ups but you could be being held back by your biceps or your grip strength for example. Ideally you already have a rough idea of which area is failing first and you can work those areas directly.