How to do pull ups, when you can't do pull ups

If you are like me, you struggle with pullups. Pushups I can do, but those back exercises are difficult. In fact, when I did the fitness test before starting Tony Horton's P90X, I was able to do 33 pushups, but only 1 pullup.

Hmmmmmm....

During P90X, Tony suggests doing chair-assisted pullups, where you do as many pullups as you can, then put your toe on a chair to help you do a few more.

This didn't work well for me, because (1) all my usable chairs have wheels, and (2) the floor below my pullup bar is tile, so even trying to use a step stool was a problem, because it kept slipping.

I struggled with the step stool all the way through my first iteration of Tony Horton's P90X. I tried repositioning it, putting something behind it, trying to keep it in place, but finally ended up with it right below my body, which pretty much removed a lot of the resistance and, therefore, rendered the exercise less useful.

As I continued the program and got tired of struggling with the stepstool, I tried using an exercise band, which is another option Tony suggests. Using the band did better for me, so I stuck with that for a while, but eventually I had to acknowledge that a rubber band just does not provide the resistance that a 180-pound body can. I had to start doing real pullups.

Problem was that I didn't feel I could get enough work in during the time allotted on the DVDs. Tony is a pullup master, and he whips right through them, but I would end up quitting when I thought I still had a few in me.

The answer finally came to me. It takes a bit more time, and requires a pause if I'm using the DVDs, although often, these days, I do the workouts without them.

Here it is: I just do as many pullups as I can do in one minute. I can rest, kip, stand on the ground between each pullup, if I need to, but I do as many as I can do in one minute.

I use my battery operated kitchen timer, set it for a minute, and start the timer before each set. I don't stop trying to do pullups before the beep.

This gives me the resistance I need to progress, and also gives me a number of real pullups to record, instead of chair assist or band method. Because real pullups are what I want to be doing, that works for me.