You get to a certain age and exercising isn’t about getting stronger but about slowing the inevitable decline of muscle mass and endurance. I’m simply trying to hang in there so I can continue doing the things I want and need to do, from playing tennis to hiking to climbing ladders and hanging storm windows on the house.
There’s one exercise that gets harder and harder to do as you age: the pull-up. My pull-up capabilities have declined over the years, and then took a nosedive down to one pull-up, just one, after I spent months rehabbing a chronic shoulder injury.
I couldn’t accept that only one pull-up was my new normal. I decided to focus on improving my performance in this single exercise, despite the fact that age is against me and being a taller person is against me because pull-ups are harder for taller people due to basic physics and the longer arm travel required to get your chin above the bar. Still, those are not excuses for doing only one pull-up.
I have a pull-up bar in my garage. I started getting on the bar every time I went into the garage. I did one pull-up. I hung for a while. I continued to show up and work at it. Soon I could do two pull-ups. I did negative pull-ups by lowering myself from the top position. I practiced. I did three, then four.
Within a few weeks, I was up to five pull-ups, still not near what I used to do, but making steady progress.
And then, by some miracle, I achieved an unprecedented breakthrough. Six pull-ups, then seven, then eight, and next thing I was in double digits, then a full dozen. I could do twelve pull-ups!
It wasn’t just this one exercise I improved at. No matter what I tried, I could do more, lift more, stretch farther, run faster. Push-ups. Squats. I shaved minutes off my time for the mile. I could pedal my bike fast enough to feel the wind in my face.
I had done the impossible: I had turned back time. I felt forty years younger.
It’s true, a part of me was puzzled. In what world should I be able to perform in this way?
I realized I’d been visiting other worlds. I’d recently finished reading this year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Angel Down, by Daniel Kraus. In it, five American soldiers in the trenches of World War I discover a mysterious fallen angel on a devastated French battlefield, setting off a desperate journey shaped by their competing desires and fears. And on a recent long car drive, I listened to a short novel by Stephen King, Elevation, in which an ordinary fella mysteriously loses weight without getting thinner.
So I’d been immersed in some imaginary, supernatural phenomena. Had I somehow been absorbed into an alternate reality?
I didn’t tell anyone about my renewed physical strength. I didn’t want to brag. I didn’t want to face the skepticism. And I didn’t want anyone to dare me to prove it.
But did I ever feel good. It’s hard to keep extraordinary achievements to oneself. So I told Harriet.
She thought I was joking. Twelve pull-ups? Squatting your body weight? Running at a pace you did twenty years ago? It’s not possible.
I’ll show you, I said.
We went out to the garage. I got on the pull-up bar. Go ahead and count for me, I said.
I did four pull-ups and couldn’t get another.
Let me try again, I said.
I gripped the bar a second time. I took several breaths.
Three pull-ups.
Is this some kind of joke? she asked.
I swear I was doing twelve just yesterday.
Okay, I believe you.
She didn’t.
I began to not believe myself. Had I succumbed to some kind of fantasy or delusion? Or had I broken a mysterious spell by telling someone?
I’m back to struggling on the pull-up bar. Four, five, a couple of times six, but twelve seemed an impossible world away. I’ll never understand what happened, and I’ll always hope it happens again.
