You’ll recall from a recent post that my benchmark for complete recovery from distal biceps surgery was the ability to do chin-ups.

The first workout I did 1 set of 5 reps. I performed chin-ups twice a week and each workout I added 1 set. I stuck with just body weight throughout and kept plenty in reserve doing only 5 reps per set, but I did them in a strict, slow and controlled manner.

On the final workout, I tapered by reducing the volume, not the intensity. It was still body weight only, which by the way is back up to my pre-surgery level of 200 pounds, but the number of sets dropped dramatically from 7 down to just 1.

That taper set was done at a faster pace and more reps were performed. I still kept a bit in reserve but was able to manage 10 reps with no discomfort. As you can tell in the video, I’m stopping just shy of full extension at the bottom to reduce the stress on the tendon slightly.

All in all, the first attempt back at supinated-grip chin-ups was a success. I should be able to use additional loading next time around.