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Comment by brucephillips | Hacker News Reader

These are Max's pullups for his "40 pullup challenge": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-3t9KuGhuo

Something tells me this guy is cutting a few corners.

Nice find.

You can just look at his build to know the kid can't do 40 pullups. And that's the red flag that tells you most everything else could be equal BS. Lies are like cockroaches.

Well, he uses sigmoid instead of relu, perhaps trying to make up for it!? https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-WE337_CHESSL_M_...

I hate when you do something just to achieve the end result and not realize the real purpose behind anything that you do. My point is not that his form is bad. Its to do with any sort of competitive physical exercise.

You want to do 40 pullups properly in perfect form ? Sure, you can train for it, optimize every part of the movement, get proper nutrition and do it.

But is that the main objective ? If it is, then fine. But if your objective is to strengthen your lats and grip strength then there is no point in doing a single set of 40 reps. Split your set into 15 reps. And do 4 or 5 of them. Pace it properly and with perfect breathing. And concentrate on your lats. Squeeze them hard and expand fully, go slow on the negative. There's too many things if you go into the details.

Oh my...those are quarter pullups at best.

Flexed arm-hangs

haha, good point. 0 pull-ups done.

Is the issue that he's not going low enough? Or that he's swinging his body?

Not going low enough. A pullup requires you to straighten your arms completely to 180 degrees. He's not even getting to 90 degrees. It's not anything resembling a real pullup.

It was the one challenge video I clicked through because it seemed like the most difficult. 40 pullups is a hard task.

I wish Max wouldn't lie to market himself.

His definition of a pull-up for purposes of the challenge was to reach 90°, but I agree that he doesn't do so in this video.

https://medium.com/the-mission/my-month-long-quest-for-40-pu...

You can look at his other projects, and he seems to do well under his definitions of success. He emphasizes that he's not starting from zero with respect to (almost) any of these skills.

https://medium.com/@maxdeutsch/m2m-day-1-completing-12-ridic...

I could define an apple to be a banana. It doesn't make it accurate.

I can run a marathon in 2 minutes. By the way, my marathons are 20 feet.

When doing proper pull-ups you have to hang while keeping your back muscles engaged and with hands wider than your shoulders; pulling yourself up from that position is challenging. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYpSV-_gBaE

Bottom - arms straight. Top - chin above the bar.

Anything less than that is not a pull-up.

I'll disagree slightly with posters who say that your arms should be straight 180 degrees at the bottom of the movement, since you want to keep your shoulders engaged throughout; a slight bend through the elbow is best, I think.

But by slight I mean 170 degrees or something, not 80 or whatever this guy is doing.

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