Setting the Bar

Achievement unlocked. 

After years of stressing I would never again be able to achieve this physical feat, I have done it. Ladies and gentlemen and those who identify otherwise, this past Monday I did a pull-up, and yesterday I did two pull-ups. Shocking, I know. Call the papers. Stop the presses. Get the news team over here. Michael Dargie has done a pull-up.

When I accept my award at the “World Pull-Up Awards” I will be sure to thank my amazing parents who inspired me last week—showing me yet again that anything is possible. They will probably blush and say “Aw shucks” while stabbing their toes in the dirt when they read this, but my parents hold multiple World Records in athletics and are two of the most inspiring people you could ever meet.

Last week, when I was visiting them on Vancouver Island I noticed they had one of those Pull-Up bars mounted in one of their doorways. You know the ones, they aren’t permanent and can be removed easily by just lifting them off the frame? “Do you want to try it?” my parents asked. Fearing I would either pull the trusses out of their roof or rip my arms from my shoulders, I declined.

I’m not huge but I’m also not little.

Here’s how channel-focused I can be: I couldn’t stop thinking about doing pull-ups. The thought of it consumed me over the week and even on the flight back home. On Monday morning, one of the first things I did (after doing laps at the local YMCA) was go to Sportcheck and buy a pull-up bar. The HARBINGER MULTI-GYM ELITE pull-up bar to be exact. I’m not messing around here, it’s the Elite multi-gym all the way (apparently I can even do Situps and Dips with it!). Pull-ups, Situps and Dips – look out world here I come!

As a brief backstory, when I was much younger and teaching motorcycle riding, one of the places we taught was at McMahon Stadium. At the top of the lot were a couple of full-size soccer nets that would be left there for safekeeping when the Calgary Stampeders were training in the field below. I’m not sure why they didn’t trust the Stampeders Football team around soccer nets, but there they were, parked on our motorcycle lot. Maybe they were afraid the team would toss them around for fun and they would get bent.

Fun fact. This was around the time Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was signed (briefly) with the Calgary Stampeders and would be in the practice field below us, not bench-pressing soccer nets.

What do soccer nets have to do with pull-ups? Well, between motorcycle teaching sessions I would head over to the soccer nets, jump up to hang on the crossbar and then start doing pull-ups. When I first started doing them I could do 10 a couple of times a day, then over the coming weeks (wearing all my biker gear) I got up to 75 pull-ups per session. I never did hit 100 per session. I never set that goal, but wish that I did. 75 seemed enough at the time.

My current pull-up goal is to get back to 10. I will be very happy when I can do 10 full-range pull-ups (without biker gear). Start with achievable goals, I always say. From there who knows? Maybe this time next year I’ll be getting inducted into the “Pull-Up Hall of Fame” and Dwayne Johnson will be reminiscing about the time he was on the Calgary Stampeders practice field while Michael Dargie was teaching motorcycles and doing pull-ups in the lot above him.