Terminal Lance #421 “Perfect Pull-Up”

I’m just gonna come right out and say it: pull-ups are harder for us tall people.

Yup.

That’s right.

Suck a dick.

When I was in boot camp, our platoon guide was a 300 PFTer, which is why he was guide, because running a 300 PFT is obviously indicative of your leadership abilities. Never mind the fact that he UNQ’d on the rifle range twice (I would argue shooting things is a valuable skill that Marines should be good at), but he could crank out 40 or 50 pull-ups without batting an eye.

Of course, he was about 5′ 5″ and 150 lbs of raw muscle. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with that, more power to him and his physical prowess, but when you’re naturally tall and lanky, it’s frustrating to try and measure up to something that is literally impossible for your body type. That’s not to say that tall people can’t do 20 pull-ups, it just means that the ratio of muscle, weight and training is much harder to accomplish. I’m the type of guy that has to actively work on keeping mass or else I actually get thinner. It’s a blessing and a curse, as I will most likely never be obese, but when I skip the gym I end up losing what little gainz I can accomplish.

All of this is to say that pull-ups as an exercise are a really great measurement of upper body strength to weight ratio. The only issue is that, when you’re over 6 feet tall, you need enough muscle mass to “pull-up” around 200 lbs. A shorter person that can do twenty pull-ups is actually pulling up exponentially less weight than someone that is taller.

Strangely, I can do more pull-ups now than I ever could when I was active duty, but that’s beside the point. Yeah, I just spent an entire comic and blog post bitching about pull ups.

Deal with it.