Exercise and fitness: weight loss and pull-ups

Self-tutoring about exercise and fitness: the tutor mentions a development during weight loss.

One might like to believe that, as one gains weight, the body’s muscles will compensate, so long as one keeps exercising them. Yet, perhaps it doesn’t always work quite that way.

I’ve been doing pull-ups for years. However, a few months back, my weight ballooned to 199 pounds. At that weight, try as I might, I could no longer do even a single pull-up.

Now, back down at 183 pounds, I can easily do pull-ups again. In fact, my rep count is increasing.

It is true that, at 199, I was too heavy: my BMI was 26.3, for instance. (Above 25.0, it seems, is Overweight.) At 183, my BMI is 24.1, which is classified as Healthy. It seems some exercises – perhaps especially body-weight ones – are easiest to facilitate by losing pounds when one is already too heavy.

Source:

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute