17-year-old high schooler does 7,300 pull-ups to smash world record

How many pullups can you do? 10? Perhaps 20? For most of us the answer would be “one,” or some single-digit permutation thereof, but 17-year-old Andrew Shapiro just made the entire world look like weaklings.

The high school junior from Northern Virginia has dreams of competing in American Ninja Warrior. This can’t be realized until his 21st birthday, so in preparation he decided to break a world record, as one does.

His attempt began at 8 a.m. on a Saturday -- and the world records began falling. First he broke the most pull-ups in a six hour period, then decided to continue and broke most pull-ups in a 12 hour period. Still not satisfied he went after the 24-hour record, 6,800 ... he broke that in 15 hours. By the time it was over Shapiro completed a grand total of 7,306.

What kind of training does this take? How about he practiced by doing 10 pull-ups in a minute -- then continued doing that for six hours straight. It’s simply a remarkable example of the human body’s capabilities, but it had more meaning for the high schooler. The reason he began this quest was thanks to inspiration from his father, who is battling colon cancer.

We’ll need to wait four years before we see Shapiro on the American Ninja Warrior course, but he looks like the wait will be worth it.

h/t Washington Post