In case you didn’t know, I just turned 40. I made some changes in my life so that I could try to take better control of my mental and physical health. (Related post – Reflecting on my life at 40: Meandering Thoughts).
I decided to make a goal to do 100 consecutive pushups of at least moderate quality.
Why 100 Pushups?
One of my top goals as I enter my 40s is to take better care of myself mentally and physically. I knew that getting into better shape would help in both those areas. But I loathe going to the gym. I just don’t like the environment.
I also don’t particularly enjoy running, swimming, or biking. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy these things if they are a part of some other activity. But I don’t like doing them for their own sake.
For example, I think sports or outside games with running (even tag with the kids) can be really fun. But the running is only fun because its part of the game.
I also love swimming in a pool or lake with my kids. But I’m not interested in just swimming a bunch of laps in a community pool. I’ve tried it before and its probably the closest I’ve ever been to drowning. I got maybe a two laps in and halfway into the third when I decided I could really use a break. Unfortunately, the only way I could get to the end of the pool way by swimming there. I somehow made it and I’ve been grateful for oxygen ever since.
I also really enjoy casual biking on comfortable cruiser bikes on wide open bike lanes. I don’t want to weave through traffic or take a road bike out hoping that I don’t hit any cracks in the road. I also don’t have a need for speed. In fact, my kids joke that I drive like a grandpa because I drive so slowly (ie: not more than 5 mph over the speed limit).
I do enjoy lifting weights and I have a weight bench in my house. However, and this is going to sound extremely lazy, but sometimes the idea of getting the weights out and putting them away again is too much effort.
I ended up choosing pushups for a few reasons.
Top ten reasons why I’m doing pushups.
1. Pushups are free.
You don’t have to join and gym or buy a program guide to work on your pushups. All you need to do is keep doing pushups–just like you learned in PE as a kid.
2. Pushups don’t require any equipment.
I’m not buying floor mats, push up bars, or anything else to do pushups. I just need my own arms and my body weight. There’s nothing you have to set up or prepare. If you can lie down, you can be ready for pushups.
3. Pushups are a whole body exercise.
Pushups require you to keep your body in a plank position, which uses more muscles than you would think–unless you do already think that it uses all those muscles. If that’s the case, it uses the same amount of muscles as you think.
4. You can do pushups anywhere.
I can do pushups in my bedroom, in my closet, in the living room, in the kitchen, in the dining room… hear me out here… in the yard, in the hallway, downstairs, upstairs, on the stairs.
Anywhere you can think of that would be able to hold your body weight and length really. For instance, I probably could not do pushups on my cat. She is too small and that would squish her. I also could not do pushups on my office desk because it is only about 50 inches and is therefore too short.
5. Pushups aren’t that hard.
If you can lift up a portion of your body weight, you can do a pushup. Then you just do as many as you can or as many as you want to do.
In contrast, pull ups are a lot harder because you have to lift your entire weight. You also need special equipment. You’d probably think that you could use your shower bar, but if you think that, you’d be very wrong. Maybe you could if you only weighed only slightly more than a shower curtain.
6. The swole factor.
The thing I like about lifting weights is that you feel all strong afterwards. You feel like you turned into He-man for a little bit.
The swole feeling also motivates you to eat better. “I just need fuel because I’m a machine.” And, since you already feel strong, it makes you want to keep doing strong things, i.e., doing more pushups or lifting more weights.
7. Pushups do not take that long to do.
Going to the gym requires you to get ready, which means you have to try to find where your gym shorts are because they are somehow not in your drawer. Then you have to drive to the gym. The gym is farther than you want it to be, and you knew that when you bought the membership, but you just thought you’d power through that.
Then you get to the gym and take a little bit to put all your stuff away. After that, you have to decide on what music you want to listen to while you work out. Once you do that, you can’t really decide what exercises you should do. So you walk around for a while.
Ultimately, you end up doing pushups on some mat in the corner.
My point here is that you can skip all that stuff by just going right to the pushups in your own room.
8. It is not an intimidating program to just get a few pushups in.
According to my extensive research, there are at least a dozen different exercise programs out there. In my view, they all boil down to “Are you going to eat that second brownie?”
Trying to get to 100 pushups does not involve a complicated program. It’s really just a matter of doing a lot of pushups.
Since after the holidays, I’ve been trying to do at least a set of pushups everyday, except Sunday. This is really just enough to get the blood pumping so I get that swole feeling. Again, that feeling keeps me motivated to not eat that second brownie.
9. Increasing your pushups motivates you to lose weight.
When I started this goal around the holidays, I weighed 232.8 lbs. That’s not only too much weight for general health reasons, but it’s also too much for 100 pushups.
Just based on science, if I do 100 pushups weighing 232.8 lbs, that’s a total of 2,328 lbs I would have to lift. But if I drop my body weight to, say, 180 lbs, 100 pushups would be 1,800 lbs. That’s a difference of [computing, computing, computing…] quite a bit!
10. Pectorals.
That’s right.
My history with Pushups.
When I wrestled in high school, I could do 100 pushups like it was nothing. I couldn’t win a wrestling match, but I could do the pushups. This means that I know I am capable of doing 100 pushups because I have done it before.
I’m hoping this project will help me both build strength and lose some weight.
When I started this goal around the holidays, I could do 32 pushups.
But there’s a caveat there.
Last week I started recording my pushup sessions. I got up to 42 and was feeling pretty good.
Then I watched the video:
I realized from the video that I was actually doing half pushups.
So I’m now trying to make sure I go all the way down and all the way back up. Doing so reduced my max from that 42 down to 35. That’s okay though!
Pushup Training
While I’m trying to do at least a few pushups everyday (except Sunday), I’m doing my main pushup sessions on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
For each of those days, I’m doing a different style of pushup, rotating between standard, wide, and military.
I just cold start going for the max. After I rest from that, I do a few more reps until I do at least 100 pushups total (though not consecutively).
Meanwhile, I am tracking what I eat in a calorie tracking app. The app I use is called “Lose it!” The main reason I track my calories is because it helps me not eat that second brownie. I know tracking calories sounds like a drag, but I have actually liked it for the month I’ve been doing it.
As of today’s date, January 26, 2023, my weight is down to 226.4 lbs.
Do you want to do pushups?
If you want to do pushups, you should! If you don’t, don’t.