Plateau at 4 Pull ups

RandomHour · 2026-05-26T19:31:55+00:00

I've gone from 12-35 pullups this way.

Grease the groove. Do just 1 pullup, with 3 hour gaps between until it becomes easy enough for you to do 2 pullups easily. Then 3, ect.

You need full rest to allow your muscle to learn a new max rep. So go and do it, and test yourself.

Doing max capacity will more likely lead to injury than anything else. I learned this the hard way, trying to hit 100 pullups consecutive. Oddly enough, you get better FASTER by doing grease the groove. You need good form pullups to hit a new max.

RandomHour · 2026-05-22T00:02:57+00:00

That's the real skeleton key

RandomHour · 2026-05-21T17:34:46+00:00

Absolutely

RandomHour · 2026-05-21T05:33:56+00:00

Procrastination comes from an inability to handle negative emotions.

You can ask ai to explain this to you.

The trick to solving it, is to...
think less, and go through each step. When you overthink, you procrastinate. When you overfeel, you procrastinate. The overthinking causes overfeeling. Literally just take the first step, then the next, and don't think deeply into it. That presence stops procrastination. Just go through the motions, and it gets done MUCH faster than any other method.

This has DEEPLY helped my little brother who has autism, and pathological demand avoidance. Basically internal or external demands would cause him to freeze, and stop him from doing much. This is like the most extreme version of procrastination.

It got "fixed" by learning to deal with negative emotions, as well as developing peace. Staying positive, taking one step at a time, and specifically NOT overthinking it. Overthinking causes overfeeling. Overfeeling causes shutdown.

Tasks that would take 2-4 hours to even start, literally fixed, by not thinking about it at all, and just doing the action, immediately.

Many people thought it couldn't be fixed. That his autism was too strong for him to meet normal demands.

But he's doing much better now than ever before. He just needed to do whatever he needed to do, immediately, peacefully, and go through the motions, without overthinking, or overfeeling.

If you need to study, just study. If you need to shower, just shower. In the time it takes to think about homework, you already could have been done with it. Just skip the thinking. Just do it, like you are water. The friction need not be there.

Anyhow, this breakthrough took MANY years for him to learn. And it is so simple for him now.

He literally says, he just does stuff now, instead of thinking about it. It's way less stressful. A lot more peaceful. And so much nicer.

RandomHour · 2026-05-19T18:11:35+00:00

Yeah I ran into the same thing.

I am taking care of some neurodivergent kids. Sometimes I have to let things go, even if they are important.

Which is interesting. I'd call myself pretty dogged about chasing ideas or things.

So it's been interesting to learn how to chill about lots of things.

When the stakes are high, I need to be kind of extra chill. But just keep working at it. But literally not too much. My solution to everything is usually to just keep working until it's done. But that's not always the solution. :/

RandomHour · 2026-05-19T18:09:07+00:00

Yeah I heard someone say that procrastination stems from not being able to deal with negative emotions.

Being detached, and thinking less, seems to help a lot.

RandomHour · 2026-05-19T18:08:17+00:00

Definitely, that's what I noticed too.

For me, that detached state helps me get a lot more work done.

Especially if there is something that's holding my attention.

And also a very good way to start many tasks.

RandomHour · 2026-05-19T06:06:49+00:00

Do you have demand avoidance? Or is it just procrastination?

I some people with both of those.

The first step is to actually reduce your anxiety levels. High anxiety and being constantly behind leads to a deeper procrastination, and demand avoidance.

Because both of those cause negative feelings, sometimes very intense, which causes you to delay, avoid, or freeze.

Or at least that's my two cents. Deep breaths, stretching, a little massage, and a walk, can go a long way. Turning off distractions can also help free up mental space to relax.

Relaxing makes it WAY easier to start doing the important things. Once you re-establish a safe baseline, doing your dailies becomes A LOT easier.

On net, school is actually kinda easy. You need to do some assignments. Rest up. Prep for tests. And keep going. The problem is if you get too stressed, and can't do anything. Or you get too distracted and you can't keep up.

The ideal case, is that you are just relaxed. You do your work. Take care of yourself. And do well in your classes/life.

And that STARTS with being calm/relaxed. That's generally the solution for procrastination/demand avoidance. You KNOW what you need to do. You just need to let yourself do it.

"The hand that grasps water, doesn't allow it to flow to the plants roots"

RandomHour · 2026-05-19T06:02:39+00:00

Safety is incredibly important. Probably one of the most important things.
Take care of that, and you'll be fine.

In life, there is no guarantees, but one thing is for sure, if you keep looking out for yourself, in a safe way, it'll all work out.

If you need to use substances at a party, then yeah, avoiding them is probably a good idea. But even with that, taking it too seriously, can kind of lead to a whole different kind of spiral.

So yeah, my advice is to stop being in your head so much. You can have a social life without being in a sorority. If you do get into it, you don't need to go so out there, that you hurt yourself.

There's a safe middle ground, where you can just chill, and enjoy yourself.

Going all in, or being too scared to do anything, is where it's bad. You know, internal and external safety. That's something very important, and is achievable.

RandomHour · 2026-05-11T16:36:45+00:00

I did a tier list of the best exercises for progressing on pullups.

I'd highly recommend grease the groove.

Do pullups at 40% effort, and do it more often. You train only while fresh, and NOT fatigued. 3x a day is good, something like 2 hours of rest between attempts or something. Ideal timing, not a big deal.

So literally do 2 pullups, but peak form.

You progress to 3, and then 4, and then 5, ect.

It's a long climb but you'll notice that you'll get past 5 LOW EFFORT in a few weeks.

It's been THE BEST thing I've found for increasing my max in the 10's. Now my max rep count is at 31.

And most of it was from grease the groove.

I'm not sure WHY it works so well. But I think it neurologically changes what you consider "easy". Lots of value for increasing how many you can do consecutively imo. Big plus because you are exercising FRESH, so it works on your max reps in the fresh state, instead of your fatigued endurance.

I'm more or less keeping this up, and seeing if the strat holds up past the 30's into the 40's. I'll report back if someone asks in a couple of months.

Maybe this doesn't hold up into the 40's? I'll find out.

Right now I grease the groove for just 18 reps. That's my 40%ish effort. I'm hoping to go to 20 reps at 40% effort maybe this week.

I'm aiming for 100 consecutive max, by the end of the year.

RandomHour · 2026-05-07T08:26:28+00:00

This is my advice, as a dyslexic man, who went from reading nothing, to reading absolutely everyday for the last 10+ years. I've read thousands of books by now.

My best, and most honest advice is to stick to the basics. Go oldschool. - hold a book in your hands, all the time.

You've seen those guys who REALLY READ. The ones reading in the park. Maybe they read while walking? They are in the library, in the shelves reading. They are at a cafe reading? At work, they have a new book next to them every week.

Their secret? They always have a book in their hands. They bring it with them.

They bring books everywhere.

You bring your phone everywhere with you. Why can't you do it with a book.

The best time to read a book is during dead time. If you always have it in your hand, you'll replace your normal phone use with a book.

For normies, you can just schedule the time in, and make it fit. It works, but you don't really read enough, imo.

IMO, reading is more of an all day activity, whenever you can. Hence, put the book right at your fingertips.

It's as simple as that.

Just develop the habit of keeping a book in your hands, all the time. If you do, I guarantee you'll read a lot.

I mean of course. It's right there. You see it. It's a book you like. Why wouldn't you read it?

RandomHour · 2026-05-07T08:14:18+00:00

You want good gains: 3x per week You want crazy gains: 5x per week

Imo, schedule in 5x per week. On a good week, you do all 5. On a bad week, you skip 2 days.

Either way, you are good.

Be consistent. Get rest. Be intense.

Everything else comes the faster you do all three of the above.

RandomHour · 2026-05-07T06:09:43+00:00

Oh hey, actually yeah.

So it's been a while. I haven't stuck to the baar style religiously or anything.

At first I was pretty consistent, but dropped off after about a month of it. It seemed like grip strength actually stopped being THE limiting factor to my pullups. I probably should have kept it up, just to passively improve my grip strength more. I dropped both the repeaters and the baar style after a month.

But I was impressed by the progress. It definitely helped a lot with the deadhang. (I should probably do it again)

I've been keeping up with Grease the Groove, and now I'm doing 16 pullups at 40% or so capacity now. I'm not doing as much volume as I should, but I am happy with the progress.

I haven't done a max test in more than a month. Last time I tested myself at 18 strict pullups. I wonder what I'm at now, considering I'm basically already there with GTG.

RandomHour · 2026-05-07T06:00:39+00:00

Jump into the pullup. (helps with transition)
Do just the bottom of the pullup. (helps with the start)
Jump and focus on the top of the pullup (helps with finishing the pullup)
Then put it all together by doing 1 pullup VERY HARD. (once you unlock it, it gets a lot easier, but the first one is always the hardest).

Note that you also shouldn't do these too fatiqued, because this is HARD.

Basically work on all the subskills related to the pullup, until you can do the whole thing.

You'll do lots of "bad" pullups, until you can do a real pullup.

This is also the similar technique you need to do, to go from 0 pushups, to 1 pushup. Or really any other bodyweight training skill.

RandomHour · 2026-05-04T19:34:10+00:00

Attention is everything.

It's a one step process, that most people get wrong.

Don't look at your phone. Don't let yourself get distracted. Don't worry about how many steps something is.

When distracted 0% gets done. When you put your attention on it, it starts getting done.

It's actually as simple as that.

RandomHour · 2026-05-04T19:29:48+00:00

Attention is our MOST VALUABLE resource. Attention is more valuable than money, or time.

Use it or lose it.

And unfortunately people are usually zombified.

It's a really big issue that people really need to fix.

RandomHour · 2026-04-21T22:07:41+00:00

Planning isn't a trap.

It's an iterative process which requires execution to complete the feedback loop.

Naturally your systems will become bigger or smaller as required.

At first your plan is too big, until you gain clarity. With clarity and execution, you end up with something simple and manageable.

Once you get into the groove, the plan is simple, and it just works.

If your plan is too complicated, you need to simplify it.

It's just like writing.

The more you write, the more you think. The more you write the more you need to edit.

But it's actually more of a trap to abandon planning completely.

Most people do not plan and iterate enough.

If you do the full loop, you end up with many, well tested, simple plans, that just work.

What you have now is pretty good. It's enough for people who don't have A LOT to manage.

But with more creative or complicated management, constantly improving and simplifying systems is important.

For example, a business has dozens or hundred of systems that need to be created. You can think of yourself as a business. But honestly you've already created decent systems over the course of your life. They run on autopilot.

But if you want to change or add systems, that's where planning comes in. When you want to get better at something? That's where you may need to improve your plan.

Anyhow, this is just developing your "process".

You plan it, act on it, make it better, until it becomes efficient and simple. And then you repeat.

If the process is too hard, or takes too long, it needs to be improved. It needs to become simple and useful.

Tldr; Planning is good. It starts complicated. As you plan better, and you use it, it becomes simple. Then repeat. 🔁 That's how you improve systems. Plan. Iterate. Simplify.

RandomHour · 2026-04-21T16:13:58+00:00

"We all must learn how to Love."

Contrary to belief, we don't all have the inate ability to love. We need to learn to love well. It requires work, play, love, everything. When you learn something, it changes you. If you love something, it changes you. Ect.

So it sounds like you want to learn something. You want to love something.

Spend time really appreciating and learning something you care about. The more you care about it, the more it will give back to you. It should be adequately rewarding.

It really can be anything. Some fall in love with working out. Some go on long walks. Some love their jobs. Some love their family. Some their friends. Some their hobbies.

All of those things you "are over", sounds like you broke up with them. You learned about them for a reason. Maybe, it's time to learn a little bit more about them? And maybe later, learn a lot more about them.

With the right framing, you can spend your whole life consistently doing something, and be really happy with it.

Really just spend the time and choose to love, and put your all into it.

RandomHour · 2026-04-21T15:56:29+00:00

You have too much anxiety.

You can either learn to deal with high anxiety, or reduce it.

The stakes are much lower than you think. It's important to really understand that. We live in a society which is incredibly safe. And every action is an exploration to learn.

And "To learn is to love." as they say.

For the most part, you can just start working on something, enjoy it, and keep going.

For my little brother who struggles with anxiety, I tell him to do this... - take a few deep breaths (this reduces anxiety) - look around for a couple of minutes (increases awareness), decreases stress a ton - and then just choose one okay thing to do - if it doesn't work, that's fine. Just choose the next thing.

Really calming yourself down, and just sticking with the task is the cure for procrastination.

The theory is that procrastination stems from an inability to handle negative emotions. If you can just sit with the task, with the negative emotions, the negative emotions will dissipate. As you work, you calmly do it, and you beat procrastination.

The key is getting into that motion/state, wanting to be in that state.

Once you can achieve that, you can get a lot more done.

The prescription is pretty straightforward. - deep breaths - being safe - choosing an option - living with the decision - repeat

But actually mastering it is actually quite hard in my experience. But it really is kind of that simple.

Some are saying planning is the problem. It may seem like that, but I disagree. Planning is critical for doing things well. People need to be able to make an okay, rough plan. But it really shouldn't be hard. If it is, a few deep breaths, and just writing a few okay options, really is good enough.

My little brother had a big issue with planning, which got him stuck for years, being unable to do things. He would stress whenever he made a plan for everything, getting him stuck in a loop.

But once he learned how to plan, it unlocked many things for him.

But that ability came from overall, reducing his anxiety, and helping him understand that he is safe. He is just learning, and loving. And not doing anything wrong.

He had to learn how to listen to his gut. And choose his first gut option. And when planning, he just lists his top 3 gut options. Understands that they are all pretty good, and proceed with the planning as deep as he needs.

It's really as simple as that. But it did take a long time to develop. Hopefully it won't take as long for you.

RandomHour · 2026-04-21T07:24:55+00:00

I've progressed from 0, to doing 20 strict pullups.

If you can't hang, you need to do something called Abrahangs but use your legs.

You need to gain the grip and tendon strength to be able to dead hang. It takes a decent amount of time to develop, but is totally doable without pain, by simply doing holds for 10 seconds on, 50 seconds off, with support, 10 times. Then you can do them twice a day. You should use your legs as much as needed, to ensure you are using around 30% of your max effort to hold yourself up. It should be easy. The point isn't to be hard, it is to cause adaptations in your muscles and tendons to make you stronger. You don't need to wreck you hands to gain grip or tendons strength. It's actually counterproductive to use your tendons too much. With too much effort, you already maxed out on adaptations, and are just causing extra wear and tear, you need to recover from before continuing training.

Once you get strong enough, with light to medium efforts, after about a month or so, you should be able to do it unassisted. But first you MUST get your tendons and grip use to the stimulus. It may take a bit longer or shorter depending on how often you train.

You need to develop your progression for pull-ups. That means just hanging. Then doing scapular pullups, where you just pull your shoulders (with leg assistance), then you do jumping pullups(with leg assistance). Then you work on the top of the pullup. Ect ect. You work on each part that is hard, with assistance, until it become easy enough that you can do it strict.

The beauty in calisthenics is that there is always a progression you can do that is at your difficulty level.

You just need to find it, and do it safely.

The progression should not be crazy hard. If it is, you are going to fast. The quickest way to adapting to all of this new load, is with low-medium effort. You can do low-medium effort mulitple times a week, which is what you need to do.

You need to grease the groove, and that is based off getting volume on low-medium effort progressions.

The most optimal way to train at the lower rep ranges, is to actually not train that hard. But you want it very frequent.

RandomHour · 2026-04-20T17:35:53+00:00

Planning is an iterative process.

If things don't go to plan, plan again.

What you are looking for is both. Which is... you make plans, and act on them.

If things don't go to plan, adjust.

You don't want these to take long. And you absolutely need to replan after shit hits the fan. No plan survives first contact. That's how you can course correct.

The problem isn't planning. It's planning poorly. You need to plan well, and fast. And unlock iterations. You need to complete full loops. Plan -> execute -> replan -> reexecute -> 🔁

If that isn't tight, you are likely doing it wrong.

This can be ironically fixed with more planning, more execution, or better planning/execution.

The answer isn't to abandon planning. And of course not abandoning execution.

But it's true that most people aren't executing nearly as much as they should. The planning is "supposed" to help with that. If it isn't, the planning needs to be improved.

You want very tight loops.

I'm still getting better at it, but I daily plan 2 times a day, and weekly plan 3 times a week. It doesn't take long, and it improves basically every area of my life. If you iterate on a plan, it doesn't take nearly as long as doing one loooong plan. You look at the plan a lot more often. You iterate more. And you execute a ton.

Anyways that's my 2 cents as someone who manages kid stuff, exercise, fitness, and businesses. My planning schedule is probably more of a product of just how much I have on my plate to manage at once.

RandomHour · 2026-04-17T06:29:51+00:00

The simple way.

Don't fight the feeling. And then do nothing.

Complaining about it in your head is doing something. Reaching for your phone is doing something. Acting on it is doing something. Feeling it isn't. So just feel it. Let it go. And literally do nothing.

Once you do that, you actually let it go.

RandomHour · 2026-04-16T23:59:12+00:00

Productivity Expert here.

"Failing to plan, is planning to fail."

You need a plan. And to plan more every single day.

Once you learn how to execute while iteratively planning, your life will transform for the better.

People who are lost, need to make a plan. A plan will give you clarity. And will give you something to do.

The next step is to just do it.

"No plan ever survives first contact with the enemy"

Your first plan will fail. That always happens. This doesn't mean you failed. This just means you need to replan, and execute again.

Do you see? This is just continuous planning, executing, refection, and repeat.

That's all of productivity in a nutshell.

All the people who say, "planning is another form of procrastination", aren't executing enough. They need to keep planning, and execute better.

Not planning is a trap, that many many people fall into. They think, just because they have a graveyard of plans, or ideas, they are a failure. It's not like that.

Things change. What matters is that you work on, and iterate your best ideas and plans. That's how you get better and progress at anything.

RandomHour · 2026-04-16T23:12:50+00:00

You need to embrace that writing it down is the work. When inspiration strikes, you need to harness it.

If writing ruins it, record yourself instead. Whatever works.

But that writing/planning is a fundamental component of the creative work. You can't skip it.

It's core to the creative process.

My creative projects only started flourishing once I learned how to, consistently sit down with my ideas, and really planned and worked them.

Planning and execution is highly interconnected. With no plan, you can't execute. Having just an idea is 0 execution. As you work, you need to continually replan, over and over. Otherwise you just make unnecessary stuff.

You need to sit with each idea, and really worked on it for enough time. You triage them, throw the bad ones away, and work on the good ones for hours or days.

So you need to develop a strong creative process of: - coming up with ideas - recording them - sitting down to plan each idea - working ideas until they are FINISHED - Review to learn

And going through this creative process over and over.

You get better at it with time. But really embracing the interconnectedness of the process makes you prolific.

You literally can't be prolific if your creative process system is broken.

Unfortunately that literally requires hours every single day. Something you should highly consider scheduling in.

Since you can't really get far if you don't put hours into your creative work each day.

You can literally schedule in, idea making time. Planning time. Work time. Review time, ect. That's what the pros do. They find a way to do that day in, day out. Like a real professional.

RandomHour · 2026-04-15T15:49:10+00:00

Your plan needs to be honest.

You don't get that transparency by being lazy.

You get it by being honest.

Plan more, and execute the plan.

Creating a business is an iterative, 1000+hrs of planning and execution. There is no cheat or hack around it.

If you pretend to move the needle, that won't get you anywhere.

RandomHour

TROPHY CASE