How I changed my exercise habits

"Every day, with no excuses, I went to the gym and did fifty pull-downs on one of the machines."

This is not the most efficient means to get towards doing a pull-up. High reps with low weights activates different muscle fibers than low reps with high weight. I would recommend increasing the amount of weight and reducing the number of reps on your lat pulldown. You should also skip a day in between doing this exercise each time. You could do 50% of your body weight as a warm-up, then try 75% of your body weight and see how many reps you can do. If you manage more than 5, you don't have enough weight on there. Incorporate this into a circuit routine to minimize down time. A warm-up set followed by 3 sets of 3 reps is one way of doing this. By 3 reps, I mean your goal is to reach complete fatigue after only 3 reps. You should still try to complete as many reps as you can. Your circuit would include at least 3 other exercises in between that don't target your back so you have time to rest. On your skip day, just do cardio. Another thing to try is to use different variations of the lat pulldown, so you target as wide a variety of muscles as possible. Be careful about your form.

It would not work for me. The whole idea of going to some gym alone and doing training that develops skills such as strength I do not actually need to use feels very demotivating. It feels useless and sterile.

My method: I wrote about it elsewhere, but in nutshell, I needed a real sport, such as martial arts. Without a sport goal, simply being healthier and sexier is not motivating enough, and it feels silly to get stronger or more flexible without ever having anything to actually use that for. It feels silly to get strong and then go back to the computer and not use it. I also needed the motivation a martial arts trainer yelling commands is giving. On my own I would get bored after maybe 10 mins of cardio, while with a trainer I can do an 1.5 hours long martial arts training without even getting tired, and it offers me a whole package of strength, technique, flexibility, speed, courage, all kinds of trainings, while the whole session doubles as a cardio with actual bouts of HIIT (such as heavy sandbag stuff). So I get a nice overall package there (boxing, but now more drifting towards the kick-boxing class as the trainer is simply better, generally it is better to choose the best trainer you can find, not the "best" martial art).

The only issue is that it is suboptimal on the strength training, 4 x 20 push-ups during a training won't make anyone buff, but once I signed up to an actual sport, such as trying to get a yellow kick-box belt, I feel way more motivated to also do bodyweight progressions at home. This is where being kinda fat is actually helpful. I intend to impress the guys at the martial arts training by doing one-handed push-ups (Pavel Tstatsouline: Naked Warrior book) and given that I am like 106kg (233 lbs, not as horrible as it sounds as I am fairly tall, 189cm) I will probably have scary big arms by the time I get there. Well, either that, or seriously damaged wrists. I think I need to tread careful there...

In short, my view is that I need a real sport, a structured sport training with a trainer, a real goal to use strength or other skills for, which also gives an extra motivation to do exercises outside the training times as well. It is hard for people to motivate themselves to acquire skills they don't need to.

I am not saying I need to have competition as a goal. For example, people can choose to be hobby rock climbers, it gives them a motivation to be strong, yet light, not fat and so on as they can now actually use it.

I chose martial arts not because I am interested in them. I am not actually interested in any sports. But I simply figured fighting is a very basic part of animal life, like feeding or fu... making love, it is simply a very very basic biological experience that must be on your "bucket list", because it is a huge part of life as an animal in general. So I figured if you have no special attraction to any sport, then just fighting makes a good general jolly joker.

My issue with your method, I mean, why I don't think it is generalizable enough is that for example in the modern world you don't need the ability to do a pull-up. You won't use it for work. It just makes you sexier and healthier and this may not be a strong enough motivator, and it is also a mismatch (muscle mass may correlate to sexiness and health but the ability to do a pull-up doesn't, as much of it is in the nerves, not muscle size). So IMHO what is needed is find a sport goal that makes it worthwhile to have the ability to do that pull-up, such as rock climbing or parkour. So you have a real reason for wanting that ability. This would be contribution to your method. (Even better: if there is such a thing as "belts", some form of a certification of rock climbers or parkour traceours, so that you have a really clear goal to work towards, a pride based goal.)

EDIT: I missed the sentence " I initially started exercising because I wanted more upper body strength to be better at climbing". That is exactly my point, my only issue now is the relative importance of it. If I was you, I would have written this article as "Step 1: I decided to find an activity, sport, hobby where fitness can actually be used. In my case climbing." IMHO this decision was the single most important in your chain of decisions and I think you are not emphasizing it enough. If you would not have a goal like climbing, but only the usual be sexier / be healthier goals, the whole thing would work differently. This is why I think a huge amount of emphasis must be put on this, recommending people to first find a hobby, a sport, where fitness can actually be used.

Good work.

Two additional techniques that are very powerful:

1. Journaling. This means keep track of your workouts and progress. What I recommend is also recording injuries, health issues, and obstacles. This is tremendously valuable in the long term. It also seems to strengthen habits. Sort of like the maintenance manual for your car. I also recommend using a physical wirebound journal, with a pen/pencil, rather than some type of electronic solution. My journal has sat in my car in 120 degree texas heat, had liquid splashed on it, been dropped .. no issues!

2. Visualization. Very powerful when mastered (I haven't, but still give it a shot). Anecdotally, a lot of top-level athletes have cited this as being a game changer. Its basically just using your imagination. It can also be used to generate motivation on-the-fly. I sometimes imagine being back in highschool when in the weightroom or running.

Warning re:6.

telling people about your plan to "improve things by X" will cause people to generally say, "good on you" and cause your brain to go "I am so good because I did X", even if you haven't even started X, before you got to the gym, before you lost weight, before you made any improvement. Your brain will say, "well done, we did it". this often leads people to not do X because they have already been rewarded for doing it.

Be aware of this, and don't fall into the trap. Also do not advise people to apply external accountability without this kind of warning. Exernal accountability is great, if applied to people who WILL KEEP YOU ACCOUNTABLE. Not the kind of friends you might see and only talk to every two months, where your accountability will not happen.

Accountability is not simple. Be accountable to reliable and relevant people, not "everyone you know".

TL;DR; Brains lie to themselves, can reward you for sharing your goals, not completing them. Be accountable to reliable and relevant people, not "everyone you know".

I imagine this may be the TDT post you were thinking of: http://lesswrong.com/lw/4sh/how_i_lost_100_pounds_using_tdt/

My goal is “become able to do at least one pull up, or more if possible”

So, 20 months later, did you succeed in this, and if so, how did you modify your goal in time?