From Princess to Pumped: Crunch time
Meet Hayley. Hayley is the Miss B.C. Ambassador. Hayley is also on a mission to win a bet against a fellow classmate. The stakes: eternal glory and her pride. Follow Hayley as she ditches the crown to master the chin-up.
By Hayley Woodin [Contributor]
It’s time to cut to the chase: no more messing around or goofing off.
I have three weeks left to pull off a couple of chin-ups, and time isn’t very forgiving.
To ease into the swing of things, I’ve begun to practice my chin-ups with my feet still touching the ground.
It sounds useless, but if you don’t actually use your legs and instead let them rest motionless on the floor, the arm muscles you use during a chin-up will strengthen and you can practice the chin-up motion with a little less weight.
But how, you might ask, am I managing to pull off this stunt?
I mean, I have long legs, but they aren’t so long that they continue to drag along the floor as I hoist myself above a standard chin-up bar placed 6 feet in the air.
The answer, my friends, is rings.
This is no Circle Du Soleil acrobatic performance. I have merely laced – sturdily laced mind you – a strap around the top of the chin-up bar, with a ring dangling down below the bar on each end of the strap.
Because they are low down, I can begin kneeling on the ground with my arms slightly extended at an obtuse angle, and execute several chin-ups.
Basically what I am getting at is that I have created the chin-up version of a knee push-up or a “girl” push-up as it is often called.
But hey, I am a girl with little arm strength, trying to win a meal off of an overly confident classmate: what do you expect?
Next stop, raising the rings.
