Tired of personal finance bloggers pitching fitness makeovers? No? Great—because I’m about to dive into how to do more pull-ups, using a sturdy, inexpensive joist-mounted pull-up bar for your basement or garage.
Pull-ups are one of the best strength exercises you can do. Also, I’m starting a little experiment over the next few months. Time to pull our weight, slackers!
Staying fit is a key part of staying healthy as you age. It won’t solve everything, but for people like me who deal with inflammation now and then, exercise is essential. In early retirement you lose employer health coverage, and Medicare is still years away.
I’ve got cardio covered—biking and the occasional 2.5-mile run. This post is about strength work.
Research shows lifting heavy things helps you live longer and healthier. If you care about money and want to avoid prescription bills and big medical deductibles, consistent exercise should be a priority now.
Pull-ups build your upper body. They give you that V-shaped back and work your lats, biceps, abs, and grip. It’s a compound move that hits multiple muscles at once—and they’re tough.
If you suffer from occasional back pain like I do, pull-ups can help. Gravity compresses your spine all day; hanging from a bar helps stretch and decompress it. I’m not saying pull-ups will stop you from getting shorter with age, but I’m curious to see how this experiment affects a six-footer.
Grip strength matters too. It helps with heavy tools, hauling things, remodeling, biking—heck, even opening a stubborn jar of pickles. As you age and lifting gets harder, strength work keeps you functional longer.
This piece was inspired by Mr. 1500 Days. Carl’s trying to boost both strength and endurance—pull-ups, push-ups, 10Ks, half-marathons. He’s the classic early retiree showing what you can do with free time.
If Carl can hit 10 pull-ups, I can too. Where I stand now? Six. I started last week at five. My goal is 20 unbroken pull-ups by the end of 2018.
My plan is simple and borrowed from Mike Joplin. He built a massive upper body by doing one set of pull-ups every single day. He’d even use a door frame if he didn’t have a bar.
I don’t recommend Joplin’s heavy drinking and overeating when he was young—if you’re not in your 20s, your metabolism won’t handle that. Focus instead on sensible habits and tools like resistance bands.
I love these elastic bands. We hang them from our basement pull-up bar to reduce resistance at different levels. There are four bands of varying thickness. The thicker the band, the easier the pull-up—you put a foot in the loop and start pulling.
Simple, clever, and cheap. Work down to thinner bands as your strength improves. Eventually you’ll only use them for special drills—like a 50-rep set of pull-ups. Now that’s a stress-buster.
Years ago I had one of those cheap door-frame bars with anchors screwed into the jamb. They’re fine if you have a spare door you don’t close. For small homes, you use every inch of space.
My choice was something solid. A few Christmases back I got the best home pull-up bar I could find: joist-mounted. It was about $50 on Amazon. Once installed, it won’t budge. Drilling through a 1946 joist was a workout, but now I have a gym-grade bar in the basement—and we even hang stuff from it to dry when it’s not in use.
So here we are: another experiment launched.
Every morning on my way to the basement office I do a set of pull-ups in the laundry room. An hour and a half later, on the way back up, I do a set of chin-ups. Chin-ups feel easier for me right now because they target the biceps more while still working the lats. Pull-ups with an overhand grip are a better overall compound move.
If you want to blast your biceps, try a slow negative (slowly lowering) using the chin-up grip. Use resistance bands to keep pushing as you fatigue—switch to thicker loops to fully exhaust your upper back. Kipping (keeping your knees up and using a bit of swing) can add momentum for pull-ups. But never strain your neck trying to get your chin over the bar—that’s how you get hurt.
Feeling motivated? Want to join this little challenge and see if employed Cubert can keep up with that notorious early retiree out west? No bets from me yet, but it should be fun.
As for results, I’ve found I do better hitting the bar every other day rather than every day. Since my August 10 max, I’ve been “greasing the groove”: doing about a quarter of my all-out max for three or four sets, with a day or two of rest between sessions.
So far, so good. If I can add two reps to my max each month, I’ll hit 20 right on January 1.