Pull-Up Goal? Being Honest with Yourself in Goal Setting Leads to Happier Endings Written by TJ O’Brien
When a gym member asked me for help with pull-ups and dips, she told me, “I have like, 1 pull-up, and I want 2 or 3. I also have like 2 dips, so I’m wanting to increase those numbers.”
I asked for a video of her current pull-up and dip, but what I got back were a couple of incomplete reps. Her pull-up didn’t start at a dead hang – the hardest position for most people – and she had one really solid dip, but not 2.
The goal setting criteria we use at Invictus is SMART . We set goals that are s ustainable, m easurable, a chievable, r elevant, and t ime-sensitive.
The key word for this member was “measurable.” If we had measured her pull-up as ‘1,’ when in fact it was ‘0,’ or more accurately ‘.85,’ when she achieved this huge milestone of a first pull-up she would have gotten ZERO CREDIT. She would have just been at par, baseline.
The challenge when setting that baseline is being honest with yourself. If you want a pull-up, but you think of yourself as someone with pull-ups, then uh-oh, cognitive dissonance sets in.
Sometimes in order to achieve something, you have to admit to yourself that you can’t do it in the first place, and that can feel not-so-good.
After the member sent me those videos, I responded back with my feedback about her movements and then wrote, “Your goal is 1 pull-up and 2 dips.”
And you know what? This story has a happy ending.
I checked in with her about 6 weeks ago, welllll before the 90 days she had set as her timeline. She sent me a video of a full pull-up and two dips. She said she was unsure if the pull-up counted.
The start of the pull-up: a dead hang. The finish: chin over bar. Check and check.
Do you have a pull-up goal? Download our FREE Goal Setting Workbook to get started with your SMART plan for how to achieve it!