Lots of pushups

It pains me to write this. Not because what I’m writing is difficult to get out, it’s that my arms are friggin’ Jell-O right now. I just finished Week 4 of the One Hundred Push Ups Training Program by doing 105 push ups. Not all in a row, but that’s the goal.

Approximately two months ago I decided to start doing push ups when I got out of bed in the morning. No real goal, just 10, maybe 20 push ups every morning. A couple weeks after I started my regiment, I came across hundredpushups.com in my RSS aggregator. Seemed like perfect timing so I started out with the initial test. Since I’d already been doing push ups for a couple weeks, I was able to crank out 20 push ups, which put me on the “higher end” of the program.

The program has you do five sets of push ups. You start high, come down a little in the number of push ups in the following sets, then, on the fifth set, you try to do as many as you can (with a recommended goal number). At the fifth set, my arms are quivering pieces of linguine. I’ve adopted the recommended Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule, allowing a day in between for rest and recuperation.

Here’s what I’ve done thus far:

Week #1
June 23
10
10
8
6
10
Total: 44

June 25
12
12
10
10
10
Total: 54

June 27
15
13
10
10
15
Total: 63

Week #2
June 30
12
12
9
7
20
Total: 60

July 2
16
13
11
11
20
Total: 71

July 4
15
15
12
12
24
Total: 78

Week #3
July 7
26
17
17
15
25
Total: 100

Week #3 was a kick in the ass. I could barely eek out the sets above, although I did do 100 push ups total, albeit not in a row, but I was pretty proud of having done 100 push ups. The only problem was that they weren’t all “good-form” push ups; meaning my back hurt when I was done, which meant I was doing something wrong, and probably more harm than good.

So I decided to move myself a level down in the program. There are, what I’ll call, 3 levels. Level 1 for people who have very minimal upper body/tricep strength. Level 2 for intermediate. Level 3 for meat heads. I demoted myself to Level 2.

July 9
22
17
17
15
30
Total: 101

The above was difficult, but I managed to do all good-form push ups while staying focused on my breathing. Feelin’ the burn!

July 11
25
19
19
17
25+10
Total: 115

Week #4
Because of the bad news we’d received at our first OB appointment, I couldn’t muster doing push ups on either day 1 or 2 of week 4. So by Thursday, when I was feeling a little better, I had to double up if I was going to stay on track. That was brutal…

July 17 morning
22
16
16
14
26
Total: 94

July 17 evening
22
17
17
15
23
Total: 94

Yesterday morning I seriously could not use my arms to get out of the bed in the morning after having done 188 push ups the day before. I probably should have hydrated myself more and snorted some whey protein powder.

July 19
25
19
19
17
25
Total: 105

979 push ups since June 23. I think I’ll do 21 more at some point today to make it an even 1,000.

After four weeks of doing this program, I can definitely tell there is an improvement in my upper body strength. I don’t think there’s much of an outward physical difference, but I feel the difference and improvement when I lift up the cars and break oak trees in half. It’s just so much easier to do those kinds of things now.