Pull-Up King – The Weird Side of the Internet

Pull-Up King – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

I can’t do a pull-up. I was born with a debilitating condition of being lazy as hell. No real upper-arm strength. I’m tall; I heard that tall people have a hard time doing pull ups. My gym teacher in grade school was an assh*le about it too. Hindsight, he probably didn’t have a lot going on outside of school. But he made my fifth period hell, and the centerpiece of the torment was the sweat sheened pull up bar.

That said, I always wanted to do pull ups, because you always want what you can’t have, right? But it’s an unrequited longing, because being both freakishly big and freakishly tall, I’d need two super-chocked-full shots of anabolic steroids just to leave earth’s gravity a half foot. So no on the pull-ups.

But check out Truett Hanes. Truett is the current Guinness Book of World Records holder of the “most pull-ups.” He won by doing 10,001 pull-ups in 24 hours. He actually broker his old record of 8,100 pull-ups, only beaten a day later by Gary Lloyd, who had done 8,600 pull ups.

It seems like they may have just opened up this category, or that it had gotten dusty for a while. These numbers are so wilsly apart as to beg maybe a few questions.

10,001. In 24 hours. I’m going to calculate that for you. That’s 7 pull ups a minute. And that sounds doable if you’re only killing a few minutes on a pull-up bar, but that would be a consistent rate over 24 hours. Did he take breaks or let the pee run down his leg? Did he stop to eat or drink? Not eating, I get. But maybe he had one of those beer hats with spring water on.

Anyhoo, Truett, congratulations. Now please go to my old gym teacher’s house and bust out enough pull-ups to put him to shame.

More from Liam Sweeny…