FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS, Ill. – Personal trainer Brandon Garrett is always looking for a challenge.
The Fairview Heights man grew up playing several sports and was a serious runner; at one point, he ran 10 miles every morning. A few months after becoming a personal trainer at Club Fitness in O’Fallon, Illinois, Garrett set a new goal.
“It started off as nothing,” he said.
Garrett wanted to break the current world record for the most pull-ups in 24 hours. The current record is 8,600.
“If there was anybody that I knew could do it, it was him,” Delano Harris-Samuels, Brandon’s friend, said.
To break it down, Garrett would do 10 pull-ups a minute to get to 5,000 before switching his rep pace.
“Once I’m committed to something, I’m going to get it,” Garrett said.
He spent eight months training while juggling clients at the gym. Over the course of eight months, he spent 25 hours a week doing pull-ups, completing 70,000 every seven days.
Last Friday, it was time for Garrett to test his limits.
“I wanted to make sure every last drop of energy went into that bar,” he said.
At 4 p.m. at Club Fitness, Garrett began his quest for a new world record.
“I thought it was easy for him,” Harris-Samuels said. “Even 5,000 looked pretty easy for him.”
Through the darkness.
“I kept looking outside, looking for the sun to rise,” Garrett said. “That midnight to 6 a.m., I felt like a perpetual darkness.”
And through the pain.
“The forearms were the first thing to go,” Garrett said. “It literally felt like rubber bands snapping through my forearms.”
Eventually, Garrett hit 9,000 pull-ups. That was just the beginning.
“I just wanted to see how far I could get past it,” Garrett said.
In the next couple of hours, Garrett began to push his limits.
“I told everybody I was going to go to 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds. So that’s what I did. A man of my word,” he said.
In the end, Garrett completed 9,229 pull-ups, 629 more than the previous record.
He’s sent the video of his pull-ups to the Guinness Book of World Records for confirmation, which could come at the perfect time this holiday season.
“That would be really nice to get that gift going into the new year,” Garrett said. “(I’d be a) world record holder, so I’d be excited.”
