Why Your Pull-Up Imbalance Isn't What You Think It Is

You're six reps into your set when you feel it-that familiar twist. Your right shoulder rises first. Your torso rotates slightly left. By the time your chin clears the bar, you know exactly what happened: your right side just did most of the work. Again.

You've read the articles. "Strengthen your weak side." "Add unilateral exercises." "Film yourself for accountability." You've tried all of it. The imbalance is still there, stubborn as ever, making you wonder if you're just built wrong.

Here's what those articles got wrong: they're treating your body like a car with a faulty part. Diagnose the weak component, replace it with targeted exercises, and the system balances out. Problem solved.

But your nervous system doesn't work like a machine. It works more like a skilled conductor managing a complex orchestra-and that asymmetry you're experiencing isn't a malfunction. It's a carefully orchestrated compensation pattern your brain has learned, refined, and now executes automatically. Sometimes it developed for good reasons. Sometimes it's trying to protect you from something that's no longer a threat.

After a decade of working with athletes struggling with pull-up imbalances-from military personnel who need to pass fitness tests to climbers chasing their next grade-I've learned that the real fix doesn't start with your muscles. It starts with understanding why your nervous system chose this pattern in the first place.

And once you understand that, everything changes.

We're All Crooked (And That's Normal)

Let's start with an uncomfortable truth: perfect symmetry is a myth.

Research published in the Journal of Applied Physiology consistently shows that even elite athletes-Olympic lifters, gymnasts, professional climbers-demonstrate 5-15% strength differences between limbs. We're asymmetrical beings by evolutionary design. Your heart sits slightly left of center. Your liver occupies the right side of your abdomen. One lung has three lobes while the other has two. This asymmetry extends all the way up to your brain, where the left and right hemispheres literally process motor control differently.

In most right-handed people, the left motor cortex-which controls the right side of your body-shows greater activation during complex movement tasks. You'd expect this to mean right-handed athletes always favor their right side in pulling movements, right?

Wrong.

A 2019 study in Human Movement Science examined vertical pulling asymmetries in trained athletes and found something surprising: the imbalances didn't correlate with hand dominance. Instead, they correlated with three other factors: previous injury history, postural habits developed from work or sports, and something researchers called "motor preference drift."

That last one is crucial. Motor preference drift describes your nervous system's tendency to increasingly rely on whatever movement strategy worked first, regardless of whether it's the most efficient strategy. Think of it like taking the same route to work every day-even if a faster route exists, you stick with what you know because it requires less conscious thought.

Your brain loves efficiency. Once it finds a pattern that works, it reinforces that pattern with every repetition. Do a thousand pull-ups with a slight right-side dominance, and your nervous system doesn't see a problem to fix. It sees a reliable strategy to optimize.

This is why simply "doing more pull-ups" rarely fixes imbalances. You're not correcting the pattern-you're making it stronger.

The Three Faces of Asymmetry

Not all pull-up imbalances are created equal, and this is where most advice falls apart. The standard prescription-"add single-arm rows and band-assisted pull-ups for your weak side"-treats every asymmetry the same way. But a rotation pattern, a mid-range compensation shift, and unilateral fatigue are three entirely different problems requiring three entirely different solutions.

Let's break them down.

The Rotation Pattern: When Your Body Twists as You Pull

What you see: As you initiate the pull-up, one shoulder rises before the other. Your torso rotates toward one side. You might even feel like you're "swinging" slightly, even though you're trying to stay still.

What's actually happening: This isn't a strength deficit. It's a timing issue.

Your shoulder blades-your scapulae-need to retract and depress simultaneously at the start of every pull-up. They set the foundation for everything that happens next. But if your brain receives clearer proprioceptive feedback from one scapula-meaning you have better awareness of where it is and what it's doing-it tends to fire that side first.

Why would you have better feedback from one side? Maybe you injured the other shoulder years ago and your brain still treats it like a fragile area. Maybe you've spent years working at a desk with a phone cradled on one side. Maybe you've played a one-sided sport like baseball or tennis since childhood. Whatever the origin, your nervous system has learned to trust one side more than the other.

Research by Cools and colleagues at the University of Ghent, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that scapular dyskinesis-abnormal shoulder blade movement-appears in 67% of overhead athletes and consistently creates compensatory rotation patterns. The athletes weren't weak on one side. Their brains simply weren't firing both scapulae in proper sequence.

How to fix it:

You need to retrain the timing, not add strength. This requires deliberate, focused practice at a task much simpler than a full pull-up.

Start with dead hangs. Just hang from the bar with your arms straight, but here's the key: practice retracting and depressing both shoulder blades simultaneously. Not one after the other. Together.

This sounds simple, and it is. But simple doesn't mean easy. Most athletes with rotation patterns discover they genuinely can't fire both scapulae at the same time. One always moves first. That's the pattern you need to overwrite.

The protocol:

• 3-5 sets of 20-second dead hangs, every day
• Before each hang, set your intention: "Both shoulder blades pull down and back together"
• During the hang, place most of your attention on the underperforming side-literally think about it activating
• If you feel rotation starting, stop, shake out, and start over
• Progress only when you can maintain complete symmetry for the entire 20 seconds

Why does focused attention matter? Studies on motor imagery and attentional focus show that concentrating on a specific body part during movement activates the same neural pathways as actually moving it. You're not just hanging there-you're actively reprogramming your movement software.

Give this two weeks of daily practice. Most athletes see significant improvement in their rotation pattern within 10-14 days. Not because they got stronger, but because they taught their nervous system a new sequence.

The Compensation Shift: When You Cheat Mid-Rep

What you see: The first half of your pull-up looks clean and symmetrical. Then, somewhere around the midpoint, you shift your weight to one side to finish the rep. You know you're doing it. You just can't seem to stop.

What's actually happening: Your nervous system doesn't trust your stability in that specific range of motion, so it shifts the load to a position it knows it can control.

Dr. Stuart McGill, professor emeritus of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo and one of the world's leading experts on core stability, has spent decades demonstrating a fundamental principle: when your brain doesn't trust your ability to stabilize a position, it will sacrifice efficiency for safety every single time.

The shift usually happens right around 90 degrees of elbow flexion-exactly where you transition from being lat-dominant to recruiting more biceps and posterior deltoid. This handoff between muscle groups is where your stability typically breaks down.

Think of it like passing a baton in a relay race. If the exchange is smooth, the race flows. But if there's a fumble in the transition zone, everything falls apart. Your nervous system feels that fumble coming and compensates by shifting to your stronger, more stable side.

How to fix it:

You need to build trust in the unstable zone. The way to do that is through isometric holds-maintaining position without movement-right at the point where you normally shift.

The protocol:

• Pull yourself to just above the point where you typically compensate (usually mid-range)
• Hold that position for 5 seconds
• Contract everything: abs, glutes, legs. This isn't just about your arms-stability comes from your entire system
• If you normally shift right, consciously push through your left hand during the hold
• Lower slowly over 3-5 seconds
• That's one rep. Do 3 reps. Rest. Repeat for 4-6 sets.
• Three times per week, for 3-4 weeks

This feels terrible at first. You're holding at the exact position your brain wants to avoid. But that discomfort is the point. You're showing your nervous system that you can stabilize there, that the position is safe, that the handoff between muscle groups can happen smoothly.

Most athletes notice the compensation shift significantly reducing or disappearing within three weeks. The position that used to feel unstable starts to feel solid. The shift that felt automatic becomes optional, then unnecessary.

The Recruitment Pattern: When One Side Just Gets Tired Faster

What you see: The movement looks symmetrical. There's no visible rotation, no mid-rep shift. But by rep 5 or 6, one arm is clearly struggling more than the other. By rep 8, one side is completely smoked while the other could keep going.

What's actually happening: This is the only type of asymmetry that's genuinely about a strength imbalance-but the mechanism is more interesting than "one side is weaker."

You have different motor unit recruitment patterns on each side. Motor units are the functional teams of your nervous system-one motor neuron connected to a group of muscle fibers. When you need to produce force, your brain recruits motor units in a specific order, generally starting with smaller units and progressively recruiting larger ones as demand increases.

But here's what happens with chronic asymmetrical loading: the side you favor develops more efficient recruitment patterns. It learns to activate larger percentages of available muscle fibers with less conscious effort. It's like having a well-trained employee who knows exactly what to do versus a newer employee who needs more supervision.

A 2017 study in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise tracked strength athletes over 16 weeks and found exactly this: the consistently favored side developed neural adaptations that allowed it to recruit more muscle fibers, more quickly, with better coordination. The other side had the same muscle mass-but less efficient access to it.

How to fix it:

This is where unilateral training actually makes sense-but with a counterintuitive approach that most people get wrong.

The standard advice is to do the same exercises with the same intensity on both sides. This doesn't work because your stronger side adapts right alongside your weaker side, maintaining the gap between them.

Instead, you need to challenge your weaker side while maintaining-but not progressing-your stronger side.

The protocol:

• Choose a unilateral exercise: single-arm ring rows, band-assisted single-arm pull-ups, or TRX rows
• With your weaker side, work to near-failure, leaving only 1-2 reps in reserve
• With your stronger side, match the total number of reps, but at a lower intensity (use a stronger band or adjust the angle to make it easier)
• 3-4 sets, twice per week
• Continue for 4-6 weeks, then retest

This approach allows your weaker side to develop more efficient recruitment patterns without your stronger side continuing to improve. You're deliberately closing the gap.

After 4-6 weeks, most athletes find their unilateral strength has equalized to within 10-15%. At that point, return to bilateral training and the asymmetry typically stays resolved.

The Bilateral Deficit: Why Two Arms Together Can Be Weaker Than Two Arms Separate

Here's a phenomenon that doesn't get enough attention in training discussions: the bilateral deficit.

The bilateral deficit describes a counterintuitive finding in motor control research: the sum of forces you can produce with your left and right limbs working independently often exceeds the force you can produce when both limbs work together.

Think about that for a moment. You'd expect that two arms working together in a pull-up would equal the strength of your left arm plus the strength of your right arm. But that's not what happens. Instead, each arm produces less force when working with a partner than it does working alone.

A 2020 meta-analysis in Sports Medicine examining dozens of studies found that bilateral deficit averages 10-20% in untrained individuals but can exceed 30% in specific movement patterns, particularly pulling and pushing movements.

Why does this happen? The leading theory is that your nervous system deliberately limits total force production to maintain coordination between sides. It's trading maximum output for symmetrical control. When you work unilaterally, your brain doesn't need to coordinate two limbs, so it can allocate more neural drive to the working side.

What this means for your training:

If you test your single-arm strength and find a difference greater than 20%-say, your right arm can do 8 assisted pull-ups but your left can only do 5-you might benefit from a phase of predominantly unilateral work.

This sounds strange. "I need to fix my pull-ups, so I should stop doing pull-ups?" But it works by allowing each side to develop neural efficiency independently before requiring them to coordinate again.

Here's a simple 4-week protocol:

• Weeks 1-2: Replace all pull-up work with single-arm work (band-assisted pull-ups, ring rows, or lat pulldowns)
• Week 3: Introduce 1-2 sets of regular pull-ups after your unilateral work
• Week 4: Return to normal pull-up training with a 1:2 ratio (one unilateral session for every two bilateral sessions)

Most athletes find their bilateral pull-ups feel stronger and more balanced after this phase-not despite reducing bilateral practice, but because of it.

Your Brain's Map Is Probably Broken (And How to Redraw It)

Let's talk about something that sounds like science fiction but has profound practical implications: your brain's internal map of your body.

Neuroscientists have identified that the motor cortex-the area of your brain responsible for voluntary movement-contains a detailed map of your body called the homunculus. But here's the fascinating part: this map isn't fixed. It changes based on use, injury, and attention.

Areas you use frequently and pay attention to get larger, more detailed representation. Areas you neglect or avoid using shrink. Researchers call this phenomenon "cortical reorganization," and one of its negative forms is called "cortical smudging"-when your brain's representation of a body part becomes less distinct and less accurate.

If you've been compensating in your pull-ups for months or years, favoring your right side while your left tags along for the ride, your brain's map of your left side's contribution has likely degraded. You've essentially trained your nervous system to pay less attention to it.

The left side is still there. The muscles still work. But your brain has fewer neural resources allocated to controlling it precisely. The software isn't communicating effectively with the hardware.

How to redraw the map:

You need dedicated proprioceptive training-exercises specifically designed to improve your brain's awareness and control of the neglected side.

The protocol:

• Before your pull-up training, spend 3-5 minutes on single-arm work with your weaker side
• Here's the key: do this with your eyes closed
• Hang from one arm (assisted if needed). Move slowly and deliberately. Focus entirely on the sensations: where you feel tension, how your hand grips the bar, how your shoulder blade moves, how your ribs expand and contract
• Then perform 5-10 eccentric-only pull-ups (lowering yourself slowly from top to bottom) while maintaining hyperawareness of your weaker side
• Aim for 5-second descents, paying attention to every inch of the movement

Why eyes closed? Because vision is dominant in most people-when you can see, your brain relies less on proprioceptive feedback. Closing your eyes forces your nervous system to pay attention to internal sensations.

Studies on motor learning consistently show that focused attention during movement dramatically accelerates neural adaptation. You're not just moving-you're actively teaching your brain to pay attention to a neglected area.

Do this 3-4 times per week for a month, and you'll likely notice something interesting: the weaker side doesn't just get stronger. It starts to feel more integrated, more connected, more like it's actually part of the movement instead of just going along for the ride.

The Six-Week Reset: A Complete Programming Approach

Here's the problem with most corrective strategies: you're trying to establish a new pattern while continuing to reinforce the old one. It's like trying to fix a leak while the water is still running.

Most athletes add corrective exercises onto their existing program-a few single-arm rows here, some dead hangs there-while continuing to grind through pull-up sets with the same compensation pattern they've always used. Three months later, they're frustrated that nothing has changed.

If you're serious about fixing an asymmetry, you need to restructure your entire pull-up training for 6-8 weeks. Not add to it. Restructure it.

Here's what actually works:

Weeks 1-2: Assessment and Foundation

Daily:

• 3 sets of 30-second dead hangs with symmetry focus
• This is your foundation. Every day. No excuses.

Three times per week:

• 5 sets of 3 eccentric pull-ups with 5-second pause at your compensation point
• Film yourself. Compare videos week to week.

Twice per week:

• Unilateral ring rows or TRX rows
• Weaker side to near-failure (1-2 reps in reserve)
• Stronger side matches total reps at lower intensity

Important: No regular pull-ups during these two weeks. None. This feels counterintuitive-"How will I get better at pull-ups if I don't do pull-ups?"-but remember, you're not trying to get better at pull-ups right now. You're trying to establish a new movement pattern. That requires temporarily removing the old pattern from the equation.

Weeks 3-4: Building the Pattern

Daily:

• Continue the dead hangs

Three times per week:

• 4 sets of 5 single-arm negatives (lower yourself on one arm, as slowly as possible, assisted as needed)
• Alternate arms between sets
• Focus on quality and control, not speed

Twice per week:

• 3 sets of 6-8 regular pull-ups
• But here's the catch: pause for 3 seconds at the bottom and 3 seconds at the top of each rep
• Conscious focus on maintaining symmetry throughout
• Video every session-you can't feel what you can't see

This is where you start reintegrating bilateral pull-ups, but under strict quality control. The pauses at top and bottom force you to stabilize in positions where compensation is most likely. If you feel yourself shifting or rotating, stop the set, rest, and start again.

Weeks 5-6: Integration

Three times per week:

• Reduce dead hangs to 3x per week
• Regular pull-up progression: 4-5 sets of submaximal reps (stop 2-3 reps before failure)
• Primary focus: quality over quantity
• If you feel compensation starting, pause and reset
• Better to do 4 perfect reps than 8 compromised reps

Twice per week:

• Unilateral work as maintenance
• This keeps the gains you've made in Weeks 1-4

Assessment checkpoint:

• Film yourself at the end of Week 6
• Compare to your Week 1 video
• If asymmetry has reduced by 50% or more, you're ready to move forward
• If not, repeat Weeks 3-4 for another two weeks

Weeks 7-8: Consolidation

Three times per week:

• Normal pull-up training (whatever your program calls for)
• But maintain periodic form checks-video yourself once per week

Once per week:

• Unilateral maintenance work
• One session of ring rows or assisted single-arm work
• Think of this as insurance

Final assessment:

• End of Week 8, film yourself again
• You're looking for symmetry that holds up under fatigue
• If you're symmetrical for the first 5 reps but compensate on reps 6-8, that's still progress-your threshold has increased

The Details That Make the Difference

Grip Width Matters More Than You Think

Research published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that changing your grip width by as little as 4-6 inches significantly alters muscle activation patterns, particularly in the posterior deltoid, lower trapezius, and teres major.

Sometimes asymmetry only appears at certain grip widths, which tells you the imbalance is position-specific rather than global. This is actually good news-it means the problem is more correctable than you thought.

Try this assessment:

• Test yourself at three grip widths: shoulder-width, 6 inches wider, and 6 inches narrower
• Film yourself doing 5 reps at each width
• Note where you're most symmetrical

Train predominantly at the width where you're most balanced while separately addressing the problem at other widths. After 4-6 weeks of building symmetry at your "good" width, you'll often find the asymmetry at other widths has reduced automatically. Your nervous system learned a new pattern at one width and generalized it to others.

When Does the Compensation Appear?

Pay attention to which rep the asymmetry starts.

If you're symmetrical for reps 1-3 but start compensating on rep 4, your issue isn't strength or motor control-it's endurance under load. Your nervous system knows how to move symmetrically; it just doesn't trust that pattern when you're fatigued.

The solution:

• Reduce your working sets to the rep range where you maintain symmetry
• Build volume through more sets, not more reps per set
• Example: Instead of 3 sets of 8 (where reps 6-8 are asymmetrical), do 5 sets of 5 (where all reps are clean)
• Maintain this structure for 4 weeks, then gradually increase reps while monitoring for compensation

If you're asymmetrical from rep 1, that's a different problem-it's a fundamental motor pattern issue that requires the full 6-8 week reset outlined above.

The Time-of-Day Variable

Here's something most athletes never consider: your asymmetry might change throughout the day.

Track your compensation pattern at different times:

• First thing in the morning
• Mid-day
• Evening, when you're more fatigued
• After sitting at a desk for 8 hours
• After a long walk or run

Many athletes discover they have different compensation patterns in different states. You might rotate left when fresh but shift right when fatigued. This actually indicates something positive: your nervous system has multiple strategies available and chooses based on current conditions.

If your asymmetry is highly variable, focus on building awareness. The plasticity is there; you just need to guide it toward the pattern you want.

The Breathing Connection (Yes, Really)

This might seem like a tangent, but stick with me-it's more relevant than you'd think.

A 2018 study in Manual Therapy examined 100 people with unilateral shoulder dysfunction and found that 78% of them also had asymmetrical rib cage expansion during breathing. That's not a coincidence.

Your first rib and upper ribs attach directly to your scalene muscles, which influence shoulder position and scapular stability. If you habitually breathe more into one side of your rib cage-which most people do without realizing it-you've literally built asymmetry into your resting structure.

Quick assessment: Lie on your back with your hands on your ribs. Take five slow, deep breaths. Do your ribs expand equally? Does one side rise more or move first?

If you notice asymmetry (and most people do), here's a simple drill:

The corrective:

• Lie on your side with your under-expanding side facing up
• Place your top hand on your upper ribs
• Breathe slowly and deliberately into your hand, feeling your ribs expand upward
• 5-10 breaths, then switch sides and compare
• Practice this for 5 minutes, 3-4 times per week

This might seem disconnected from pull-ups, but athletes who address breathing asymmetries often see their pulling patterns improve within 2-3 weeks. Your body is a system-everything connects to everything else.

Not All Asymmetry Needs Fixing

Here's a contrarian take that flies in the face of most training advice: not all asymmetry is a problem that needs solving.

If you demonstrate a 10-12% difference between sides, show no pain, have no injury history, and your performance is progressing steadily-you might be chasing a problem that doesn't exist.

Research on athletic performance is clear on this point: perfect symmetry is neither normal nor necessary. A longitudinal study following Olympic weightlifters over an entire training cycle found that small persistent asymmetries-in the 10-15% range-showed zero correlation with injury risk or performance limitations.

Elite powerlifters often show 8-12% strength differences between sides that remain stable throughout their careers. Professional climbers frequently have 15-20% grip strength differences that don't limit their performance. Military personnel who pass the most demanding fitness standards often demonstrate measurable asymmetries that simply don't matter functionally.

The decision tree:

Address the asymmetry if:

• It's increasing over time (what was 10% six months ago is now 20%)
• You have pain on either side
• You have a history of injury on the weaker side
• It's greater than 20%
• It's affecting your performance in meaningful ways

Monitor but don't obsess if:

• It's stable at 10-15%
• You have no symptoms
• Your performance is progressing
• You can maintain it under fatigue

Here's a simple test: If you can do 15 pull-ups with what feels like equal effort on both sides, even if close analysis reveals a 10-12% difference, that's probably not worth the mental energy of "fixing." Your time is better spent getting stronger overall.

But if you can only complete 8 pull-ups because your left side gives out while your right could keep going, that's an imbalance worth addressing.

The Timeline Nobody Wants to Hear

Most athletes expect to fix asymmetry in 2-3 weeks. They want a quick drill, a magic exercise, a secret technique that rewires everything by next Tuesday.

That's not how motor learning works.

Real neural reprogramming-the kind that sticks, that holds up under fatigue, that becomes automatic-takes 6-12 weeks minimum. Your nervous system needs to not only learn a new pattern but also trust it enough to use it automatically when you're tired, distracted, or pushing hard.

Studies on motor learning are consistent on this: new movement patterns require approximately 300-500 quality repetitions to become automated. For pull-ups, if you're doing 8-10 focused reps per session, three times per week, that's 24-30 reps per week. To reach 300 quality reps, you're looking at 10-12 weeks.

And that's if every rep is a quality rep-deliberate, focused, reinforcing the correct pattern. If half your reps are done on autopilot, slipping back into the old pattern, you're not accumulating toward that 300-rep threshold. You're just churning through volume.

This is why the 6-8 week structured reset works better than adding corrective exercises indefinitely. You're guaranteeing quality repetitions of a new pattern, not mixing new and old patterns in the same session.

Be patient. Be systematic. Film yourself every week. Compare videos month-to-month, not day-to-day. And remember-your asymmetry developed over months or years. Expecting it to resolve in a few sessions is like expecting to rebuild your aerobic base after a single long run.

Your nervous system is capable of remarkable change. But it changes on its own timeline, not yours.

What You're Really Training

Here's the reframe that helps most athletes actually stick with the process:

You're not fixing a weakness. You're teaching your brain a new language.

Right now, your nervous system speaks "asymmetrical pull-up" fluently. It's automatic, effortless, deeply ingrained. You're trying to teach it to speak "symmetrical pull-up." That's a different dialect with different grammar rules.

Learning a new language takes time, repetition, and immersion. You don't become fluent by practicing five minutes a day while spending the rest of your time speaking your native language. You need concentrated practice periods where you're fully immersed in the new pattern.

That's what the 6-8 week reset provides: immersion in a new movement pattern.

The dead hangs are your vocabulary drills-simple, repetitive, building the basic elements.

The isometric holds are your grammar exercises-learning how the pieces fit together in the difficult parts.

The unilateral work is your comprehension practice-understanding what each side can do independently.

The integrated pull-ups at the end are your conversation practice-putting it all together in real-world use.

Some people pick up languages faster than others. Some need more repetition. Some have an easier time because they speak a related language (better overall movement quality, prior athletic experience, good body awareness). Others are starting from scratch.

But everyone can learn. It just takes the right approach and enough time.

The Real Endgame

The goal isn't perfect mechanical symmetry-that's a phantom you'll chase forever.

The goal is a nervous system that can:

• Distribute load efficiently between both sides
• Adapt to fatigue without defaulting to harmful compensation
• Express force through both limbs without chronic overreliance on one side
• Maintain good enough symmetry to keep you healthy and progressing

Your pull-ups will probably never look exactly symmetrical frame-by-frame on video. Elite athletes' movements don't either. What matters is that both sides contribute meaningfully, that you're not chronically overloading one side, and that you can maintain good-enough form under fatigue.

That's the standard worth training for.

Start with awareness, not volume. You can't change what you can't perceive, so spend time understanding your current pattern before trying to modify it.

Build the map before you build the house. Your proprioceptive awareness-your internal sense of where you are and what you're doing-needs to improve before your strength does.

Trust that your nervous system is capable of learning something new. It is. It just needs clear, consistent information and enough time to make the change stick.

And most importantly: give the process the respect it deserves. Six to eight weeks of focused, intelligent training will give you better results than six months of adding random corrective exercises while continuing to reinforce your compensation pattern.

The bar is waiting. Pull evenly-or at least, pull more evenly than you did last month.

That's the real progress that matters.