The Elusive KP

Years of assuming I’ll never be able to do a pull-up. Months of thinking maybe, just maybe I’ll get one. Then, weeks of hoping for more than one. Two? Check. Five? Not happening. A lifetime of jumping and negatives stretched infinitely into the distance.

But then there’s this thing called kipping. Kelly and Adrian make it look so easy. Then Pam and Kim make it look easy. I want to be able to do that. For weeks, I hang from the bar, trying to swing and get the arc right to launch myself up upward. But as a kid I was a ballerina, not a gymnast, and tragically this technique is beyond me. I’m weak. I’m a girl. I’m not athletic. The calluses on my hands are getting bigger and uglier, and they hurt all the time. I’m stuck. I can do two dead hangs, or I can swing back and forth like a fish hooked on a line flopping its way to nowhere.

Then suddenly, I do it. Last night I walk up to the bar and just go. Only for five, but that’s three more than ever before, and it’s fun. I don’t know why it clicked, and I don’t know if it will click again (I hope so because dead hangs really suck), but it was good to see that practice (and lots of encouragement) can have an effect once in while. In December, I set a New Year’s resolution for 2006 to get one pull-up. Considering it’s only July… I guess this stuff works.

--Gretchen