After completing a challenge where he did pushups every day for a month, YouTuber Gunther Da Great wanted to up the difficulty, and so he recreated the challenge with pullups, setting himself the task of doing 30 reps every day for 30 days.
It goes wrong almost immediately. After a successful first week of visiting the park each morning and doing the bodyweight exercise on the monkey bars, Gunther admits that he simply stopped going. It was only when he made the challenge more accessible and unavoidable by purchasing a pullup bar that he was able to muster the willpower to commit to doing the 30 reps every day. “I greased the wheel, so to speak,” he says. “I didn’t have to go to the gym, I did it at my house.”
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To make the goal more achievable, he also breaks down the 30 pullups into sets and does them periodically throughout the day. “I feel like I do an average of 12. 10 is when I start to get tired,” he says. “I usually just go until I’m really tired, and I’ll take a break and then I’ll do another set.”
Although he has made no changes to his lifestyle or diet aside from the daily bodyweight workout, halfway through the month Gunther is starting to see that there are some visible changes. “One thing I am noticing is I’m getting that separation in my core,” he says. “I haven’t seen my abs since high school. My arms are getting bigger… my back is getting bulkier.. I am enjoying pullups, it feels like an overall workout vs. just doing pushups, I feel like I’m activating more of my core.”
He also finds that as his technique improves, he is also able to execute slower, more controlled movements. “As I’m getting better at these, I’m slowing down even more.”
Of course, performing the same repetitive moves every single day can take a physical toll, and Gunther is forced to take a few days off to rest and recover after experiencing some severe pain. “I had a really bad knot in my back. It could have been from just consistently doing the pullups, or maybe I had bad form one day doing pullups,” he says. “One thing I’m focusing on is, when you’re doing pullups, don’t rush it; there’s more at risk than when you’re doing pushups, because all of your weight is getting thrown around if you don’t structure it or do it at a good pace.”
“I think one of the number one things I liked about it is it did a really good job of working out my core,” he says at the end of the 30 days, showing the results, which include increased muscle mass in his biceps, back and shoulders, and more visibly toned abs. “When I pull up, I’m lifting my body with it, so that helped out a whole lot. I think my physique overall looks better than when I just did pushups.”
He also acknowledges that the challenge was as much a mental one as it was physical. “I’m telling you, this was really hard,” he says, “but it was good to overcome that barrier.”
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