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In promoting the concept of positive thinking, self-help gurus often bring up the story of Roger Bannister. Bannister was the first person to run a mile in under four minutes, a feat that many experts reportedly had considered impossible. Yet on May 6, 1954, during a meet at the Iffley Road track at Oxford University, Bannister crossed the finish line at 3:59.4. After he broke the record, this opened the door for many others to achieve the same results. Well, not quite.
 
The first world record for the mile run that was recognized by what is now known as the International Association of Athletics Federations was set on May 31, 1913, by John Paul Jones of the United States with a time of 4:14.4. Between 1942 and 1945, Sweden’s Gunder Hägg and Arne Andersson broke the record six times between them, lowering it from 4:06:2 to 4:01.6. That mark held for nine years before Bannister broke it. However, consider that a month after Bannister’s memorable day, Australia’s John Landy broke the record again with a time of 3:58. Landy was, you might say, a victim of poor timing. Further, it wasn’t as though everyone suddenly began breaking that four-minute mark – it took three more years for Landy’s record to be exceeded, and Jim Ryun’s record of 3:51.1 in 1967 held for eight years. All this proves is that when it comes to breaking world records, very seldom is there a smooth, linear progression.
 
Although the four-minute-mile barrier was more fiction than fact, Bannister did make a major contribution to sports science with his particular training methods. In Why Michael Couldn’t Hit, author Harold L. Klawans explains how Bannister achieved his results by using training protocols that emphasized interval training. In simple terms, Bannister determined that he needed to run four 1-minute, quarter-mile segments at the same pace, and so he adjusted his training intervals to match that pace and designed the workouts to enable him to peak on May 6, 1954.
 
The late Charlie Francis used a similar approach years later when he trained Ben Johnson – that is, train for speed first, then work on trying to maintain that speed for longer distances. If you look at the 10-meter splits in the 1988 Olympics when Johnson ran 9.79 and Carl Lewis ran 9.92 in the 100 meters, you’ll see that the fastest splits for 10 meters for both men was .83. In other words, Johnson could not run faster than Lewis. Johnson had a better overall time primarily because of superior reaction time off the blocks and speed endurance. Now let’s jump ahead to 2008 and Usain Bolt.
 
If you examine Usain Bolt’s 10-meter splits for his 9.69 at the Beijing Olympics, you’ll see that he hit a top speed of .82 for only 10 meters – as such, at the time he was not much faster than Johnson, and Johnson had better reaction time. The difference was that Bolt did not decelerate as much as Johnson after reaching top speed. As for Bolt’s 9.58 in Berlin at the World Championships in 2009, although he did hit a top speed of .81 between 60-70 meters, his first 10-meter split was slower in Berlin than in Beijing (1.89 compared to 1.85). The major reason Bolt ran so much faster in Berlin was that during the second half of the race, he was running between .81 and .83 seconds; at Beijing he was running between .82 and .86 seconds.

 

Roger Bannister’s personal account of his record-breaking 3:59.4-mile run on May 6, 1954
 
The persistence shown by Bannister, Bolt and Johnson to push through perceived limitations brings up the myth of the “hard gainer.” I’ve always hated the term “hard gainer” because it establishes a mindset for failure. In the iron game, if someone believes they have a hard time gaining muscle mass, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and often they stop looking for the real reasons they are not improving. Bannister was a distance runner, and Bolt and Johnson were sprinters, but they all figured out that the key to being the best in the world in their events was to focus on speed endurance. This brings us to the topic of goal setting.
 
If someone starts a distance running program and runs for 10 minutes but has nothing to compare that time to, then they have no way of setting goals. On May 6, 1954, male runners had a new standard of 3:59.4 for the mile. By July 7, 1999, the standard became 3:43.13, thanks to Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco. So if you’re a male and your time is 10 minutes to run a mile, you could set a percentage of Guerrouj’s time to achieve in a specific period; for example, a percentage that equals a time of 9:50 in two months. For women, you have Russia’s Svetlana Masterkova’s record of 4:12.56 as the standard.
 
Now let’s apply this goal to pull-ups and chin-ups. When I started working with the Canadian Women’s Ski Team, I found that none of the women could perform a single chin-up. Three months later, most could do at least a dozen – I increased their strength and changed their mindset about the exercise. As such, I’ve established a doable three-month goal of 12 chin-ups for most women athletes (although I may be willing to knock off a few reps for heavier athletes such as shot-putters, who tend to be much heavier than other athletes). By the way, I use this chin-up standard as a way to measure the effectiveness of a strength coach. After an athlete achieves a dozen reps, this then begs the question “What’s next?” The answer is, as with running, a percentage of the world record.
 
Setting Your Standard of Excellence
When you look at the records for chin-ups and pull-ups, it’s obvious that remarkable results have been achieved by men and women – results that will hopefully change your mindset about what you can accomplish with hard work. Before getting into those records, let’s look at the rules.

 

According to Guinness World Records, rules for chin-ups and pull-ups include the following:
 
• Only a straight bar can be used. It must be made of an inflexible material such as steel, not of a flexible substance such as plastic tubing. It may be of any diameter.
 
• The width of the grip can be of the athlete’s choosing; however, the hands cannot be overlapped.
 
• Each single chin-up must be started from a hanging position, i.e., the arms must be straight in the “down” position.
 
• The chin must be raised above the bar.
 
• Leg kicks and lower-body movements cannot be used to gain momentum in the exercise.
 
When setting these official records it is permissible to dismount, but there are records for the most chin-ups and pull-ups without dismounting. At the time of this writing, the record holder for pull-ups is Jan Kareš (Czech Republic), who did 232 consecutive pull-ups in 36 minutes on June 19, 2010. Here are some more chin-up and pull-up records that will show you what results are possible.
 
Pull-ups in 1 minute:
   (M): 50, Jason Petzold (USA), June 20, 2009
   (F): 39, Alicia Weber (USA), August 7, 2011
Chin-ups in 1 minute:
   (M): 67, Jason Petzold (USA), August 21, 2011
   (F): 36, Alicia Weber (USA), August 7, 2011
Pull-ups in 3 minutes:
   (M): 100, Ngo Xuan Chuyen (Vietnam), 1988
   (F): 74, Alicia Weber (USA), August 7, 2011
Chin-ups in 3 minutes:
   (M): 105, Jason Petzold (USA), August 21, 2011
   (F): 69, Alicia Weber (USA), August 7, 2011
Pull-ups in 1 hour:
   (M): 1,009, Stephen Hyland (Great Britain), Aug 1, 2010
   (F): 680, Alicia Weber (USA), February 27, 2010
 
Besides the above records in standard chin-ups and pull-ups, there have been many other amazing performances that you can look at to help you establish personal goals. In 1985 Miloš Šnajdr, weighing 240 pounds, did 6 two-arm chin-ups with 266 pounds. In 1982 Rob Chisnall did 22 one-arm pull-ups, 18 two-finger chins and 12 one-finger chins on a nylon strap. And in 1953 bodybuilder Marvin Eder, at 197 pounds bodyweight, did 80 “wide-grip” chins in 1953. For more records of upper-body pulling feats, check out David P. Willoughby’s thoroughly researched 1970 book, The Super Athletes.
 
Next time you take on a challenge, athletic or otherwise, I hope you’ll remember remarkable athletes such as Roger Bannister. He set a goal, figured out the best plan to achieve that goal, and then took steps to implement that plan with a specific deadline. The result was history’s first four-minute mile. What are your goals?