How a Retired Track Coach Got Back to the Pull-Up Bar at 58

The pull-up bar in my garage has been there for eight years. For most of that time it held a pair of dusty workout gloves and a lot of good intentions. I bought it back when I still coached track, sure I would stay in the shape I was in at forty-five. Then I retired, my right knee started complaining after long days on my feet, and the bar turned into a coat rack. This spring I decided to change that, and the tool that got me there was a set of Sanakma resistance bands.

I am Renee Pellerin. I coached high school track in Chattanooga for more than three decades, and I still train three mornings a week in my garage. I lift with dumbbells, I have a flat bench, and I walk hills with my husband Glenn most evenings. I am not trying to be twenty-five again. I am a 58-year-old woman who wants to stay strong enough to keep doing the things I like, and I would rather test a piece of equipment for a few weeks than tell you it changed my life after one workout.

The specific thing I wanted to fix was the pull-up. I could not do one. I could hang, swing a little, and get partway up with a shoulder that seemed to be doing all the work. My grip was fine and my arms were fine, but my back and my core had gotten lazy. Dropping from the bar felt harder than pulling up. I needed a way to practice the movement without starting from zero, and that is exactly what a set of pull up assistance bands is for.

I ordered the Sanakma resistance bands in May. The set comes with five bands, a door anchor, two foam handles, three carabiners, a storage bag, and an exercise guide. The whole thing weighs 2.8 pounds, so it hangs on a hook in my garage and takes up less room than a pair of shoes. The bands are natural rubber, and the five resistance levels give you a way to start heavy and work down, or start light and work up, depending on what you are training.

I could not do one clean pull-up in May. By September I was doing three in a row with the band I use now, and the bar no longer felt like decoration.

Here is how I actually use them. The door anchor goes in the door from the garage into the house, and that is where I do rows and presses. Standing still for a row is easy on my right knee, which matters after years of coaching on a track. The heavier bands loop over my pull-up bar for assisted pull-ups. I started on the heaviest band in May, when I could barely finish two reps without my face turning red. Now I am on the next band down, and three clean pull-ups in a row feels like a real win.

The yellow and red bands with the foam handles are for warm-ups and shoulder work. I do a few light pulls before I pick up dumbbells, and I use them on the days when my shoulders feel tight from yard work. They are not dramatic. They are just enough resistance to remind my muscles what they are supposed to do.

I will be honest about what the bands did not do. They did not fix my knee, and they did not make me look like a college athlete. I still have a stiff right knee on cold mornings, and I still walk hills with Glenn more than I run. What they did do was give me a way to train a movement I had given up on. That may sound small, but at 58 it is not small at all.

The bands also fit the way I actually live. They are light enough to move from the garage to the living room if I want to do a few rows while Glenn watches the news. They do not make noise, they do not need charging, and they pack into the storage bag if we ever drive somewhere for a weekend. I have not become a different person. I have just added one useful thing to a routine I already had.

I also like that the bands do not care how strong I am on a given day. Some mornings I use the lighter band and just move through the motion. Other mornings I push myself. The set gives me room to do both.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you are over forty and you have a bar in your garage that you have been ignoring, start with assistance bands. Do not try to grind out pull-ups from a dead stop. Put the heaviest band over the bar, step into it, and let it carry some of your weight. Do that twice a week for a month, then move to a lighter band. The point is not to be impressive on day one. The point is to still be doing it in six months. That is the advice I would give a friend, and it is the advice I gave myself.