Amanda Gatlin’s Chin-Up Challenge!

Amanda Gatlin is a very busy mom. This 38-year-old mother of three works two part-time jobs and still manages to find time to work out once a week at Exercise Inc. I met her in 2008 when I was buying a house from her and her husband, Jarrod. During the process, she told me she knew some people who worked out at Exercise Inc. Then she asked the question most people ask, “does it really work.” I invited her in for a couple of workouts. She became a client, and within a few short months she asked if she could be a Personal Fitness Coach at Exercise Inc. Within no time she went from being a skeptic to helping people change their lives in only 20 Minutes a Week.

Amanda very quickly built a lot of muscle and strength from our program. She only trains 20 minutes a week, just like the rest of our clients. After six years of training she regularly does negative chin-ups with 100 lbs.  Doing 10-second negative chins has allowed Amanda to develop amazing strength. This, in turn, allows her to do a lot of chin-ups at “regular speed.”

I often get asked if lifting weights slowly transfers to strength and speed improvements in activities of daily living. The answer is definitely yes. If you can lift  100 pounds, and it is the maximum amount of weight you can lift, you won’t be able to lift it fast at all. You can try to lift the weight fast, but it just won’t happen. But’s let say you train for three months and you increase your strength by 50% (which is what usually happens when someone starts training with us). The maximum amount of weight you can lift is now 150 pounds. You will be able to lift 150 pounds, but only slowly. But, if you try to lift your original maximum of 100 pounds it will feel light, and you will be able to lift it very quickly, if you need to. That’s a simple example of how lifting weights slowly can make you faster and stronger. Now let’s look at our real life example.

Amanda started out 6 years ago doing 10-second, negative-only chins. The reason we do negative only chins is most people aren’t strong enough to pull themselves up in 10 seconds. That’s because it requires a lot more strength to move slowly. As Amanda got stronger, we added weight to her chin-ups with a weight belt. She is now strong enough to lower herself in 10 seconds with 100 pounds hanging around her waist. Because she can handle so much weight in a negative chin-up, doing chin-ups with just her body weight is really easy, and she can do them very quickly.

So Amanda decided to do a Chin-Up Challenge to raise money for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). She is doing this to support her dad who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma a few years ago. Her goal was to do as many chins as she could in 2 minutes. She raised donations of $75 per chin-up. This is a great example of someone using the results they achieved at Exercise Inc. to support an awesome cause.

As you watch her video, please understand that this is not how we train. All of our training is very slow, controlled and safe. But understand that she can do what she is doing because of our training.

Oh, and if you are inspired by this video, you can still support Amanda by going to her fundraising page and making a donation.

Thanks for Reading My Blog!

Bo Railey