Marine Corps promotes female officer's 'no nonsense' pullup plan

[Rocky C]

Marine Maj. Misty Posey is confident that she has a fitness training plan that can help everyone in the Corps master pullups.

The Marine Corps released Posey's tips — coined "zero to 20-plus" — in a Thursday service-wide message.

“It does not take months and months and months to learn a pullup; it does not take a year or two to learn a pullup – it’s nonsense,” Posey said in a video posted on the Marine Corps’ official website. “I haven’t met someone yet that I haven’t been able to train to do a pullup.”

Posey developed the plan to show female Marines the right way to train for the upper-body exercise. It caught the attention of Commandant Gen. Robert Neller during a Feb. 12 town hall with Marines in Virginia when a woman shared her pullups success story after trying the plan.

Posey has written several how-to guides on pullup training that are now online: The secret to pull-ups: How to go from 0 to 20; Pull-up training program novice; Pull-up Workouts; and Pull-up Training Guide.

“If you are struggling with either learning or improving your pullups, the main takeaway would be that you’re stronger than you think,” Posey said in the video. “You can absolutely learn and improve pullups in a relatively short period of time. You just need the right tools.”

Female Marines say they've figured out how to master pullups


Posey advises both male and female Marines to practice doing pullups between three and five times per day, no less than three times each week. Rather than maxing out each set, Posey does “ladders,” each of which are one-third of the maximum number of pullups she can do.

“The way you get good at pullups is to do a lot of pullups – you don’t have to tear your muscles down, make them sore and make them bigger to get pullups,” Posey told Marine Corps Times after the commandant's town hall. “You just have to train the motor patterns. Your central nervous system needs that constant repetition.”

At 4 feet, 10 inches tall, Posey learned how to do pullups so she could hoist herself over obstacles while training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego as part of her university’s Reserve Officer Training Corps program, she said.

Marines roll out tougher initial strength test for poolees


As things now stand, the Marine Corps expects that at least those women who want to train for the service’s most physically demanding military occupational specialties will be required to do pullups — first as poolees, then at recruit training and beyond.

The Marine Corps expects Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to approve the service’s gender integration plan by April 1, said Lt. Col. Eric Dent, a spokesman for Neller.

Once that plan is approved, Marine Corps Recruiting Command is prepared to contract and ship women to boot camp for training in MOSs that had been restricted to men only, said MCRC spokesman Maj. Garron Garn.

Meanwhile, Neller has ordered a review of physical fitness and body composition standards that is due to be complete by July 1. The review will look at a wide variety of issues, including whether both male and female Marines are doing the right exercises and how body fat is measured.

The review was prompted in part by discussions Neller had with female Marines about height and weight standards, Neller told Marine Corps Times.

“They were saying, ‘Hey I have been working out and doing pullups and I am over my weight for my height; when are you going to make a decision on whether women do pullups or not?’ Or, ‘I can get this [physical fitness test] score, but I am still above my weight for height,’” Neller said in a Jan. 20 interview.

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[MunkyVsRobot]

So all you have to do is pull your self up? AND do it more than just once? Huh who would have thought..

[devilbones2]

I wonder if this Major can work on a running guide. That would be great.

[madsox]

Actually the one key point there - don't train to muscle failure - is a really good one. All the (semi-)serious strength training advice I've ever gotten includes training to muscle failure as a key to making the muscles you're working get stronger.

Not that I've ever been able to put on muscle, I was 145 in boot camp and the biggest I ever got was maybe 160 in my 30s (I'm 5'10").

Until I hit 50. Now I'm more like 175, and that's not upper body muscle weight 8-(

Anyway, it would be nice to get back to 20 dead-hang pullups. Think I'll borrow some of Major Posey's ideas here.