Women's Opinion on Pull-ups

[Bill Glasheen]

George has asked me to create a FireDragon fitness challenge (assessment) for camp. You can read a bit about it on the hyperlink I created.

As I have it, the test is the following.

1) Max number of push-ups in a minute

go immediately to station 2

2) Max number of pull-ups in a minute

go immediately to station 3

3) Max number of sit-ups in a minute

go immediately to station 4

4) Best of 2 standing broad jumps, done within a minute

go immediately to station 5

5) Max number of thigh-parallel squats in a minute

go immediately to station 6

6) Timed mile run

This isn't supposed to be a picnic, and few people will do "excellent" in all categories. I'm taking the raw scores and combining them in a fashion such that each category counts about equal. Thus if you do well on 3 categories, OK on 2, and really stink on 1, you won't have such a bad score. Over time I will create separate scoring categories by age and by gender.

Here's the question.

Should I maintain station number 2 as pull-ups for women? I know some women will not be able to do any. A zero score is fine... It will be 1/6 of the total score, and I can average it all in. All I need is to be able to assess women with some kind of pulling/gripping upper-body exercise that I can do in a minute and doesn't take any fancy schmancy equipment. I'll have a hard enough time finding a chin-up bar (or 2 or 3) as it is.

I could do an alternate like length of time (in a minute) for a flexed-arm hang. This is what they did with girls in high school way back when. But are we being patronizing here with our Uechi women? Or am I being unrealistic in expecting enough women at least to be able to do a few pull-ups so I can differentiate them from each other on their pulling strength-to-weight ratio abilities?

Your vote would be appreciated. WOMEN ONLY! And post your thoughts if you have them.

Thanks.

- Bill

[Dana Sheets]

BTW - I'd edit my vote if I could. I don't think a 60 second arm hang should equal one pull up. So if you stick to that proposed standard then make it pull ups for everyone.

Dana

[Bill Glasheen]

That's an extra step going from raw score to combined score, Dana. I want to give people a choice, but would prefer if everyone could at least consider the pull-up.

I don't know what the equivalency is; it will take some reasearch. I will need a bunch of people to do both tests.

As I said, the raw scores will remain the raw scores, as long as we don't change things. Over time I can re-combined the raw scores to produce new adjusted scores.

This way at least women (or men*) get a nonzero result for that part of the test if they can't do a single pull-up. And if they can pull-up, then they're good to go.

- Bill

* Years ago at Exeter I remember all of us having fitness assessments. There was a tall, pear-shaped young fellow I recall who couldn't do a pull-up.