Wednesday, November 4, 2009

100 pushups - DONE

OK, it took me about a year and a half. And they weren't pretty. But I finished it.

Sort of anti-climactic somehow after all this time. But kinda cool to have gotten there.

2 questions:
- do I bother maintaining this level? (once a week refresher?)
- what should I work on next? (chin ups probably)

8 comments:

Manish said...

Congratulations! I have been following your posts on pushups for a while. Your persistence is very inspiring.

I haven't been able to gather courage to consider doing this myself yet. May be I will one of these days...

Congrats again. :)

dustbunny said...

Thanks. You should definitely give it a shot. I don't know if there is some profound insight to be gained from this process. But it is a little reassuring to know that something that seemed impossible will yield to discipline and determination.

Of course it is pretty humbling to think how far over the original schedule of 6 weeks I went.... :)

Manish said...

I guess the insight is that reassurance you speak of and a sort of belief in yourself. And thanks for the encouragement.

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Anonymous said...

I'd say the profound insight is that gym trainers think "anybody can do their program in just 6 weeks!"

I've been attempting to do the 6-week program myself. I've been stuck on week 3 for 3 weeks. I haven't made any progress.

The real insight is that if you want something bad enough, you'll go for it.

dustbunny said...

My recommendation would be to not follow the program too literally. At least that is what I wish I had done. For me it seems in the end that working harder but only 2 days a week was the thing that finally got me to the finish line. I had plateued several times and the last time (at about 80) seemed like the worst. Going down to 2 days seemed to give my body the needed recovery time to actually make progress.


In any case, I'd be interested in your progress and what you find works. The whole program seems pretty weird to me now. I really wonder how many (if any) have really gotten there in 6 weeks who weren't already pretty much there. I'm curious what is the most streamlined and efficient way to acheive this goal. I don't mind hardwork, but what I ended up doing was just sort of ridiculous by almost any measure.

Anonymous said...

3wk repeat here -- So far, I've progressed on the assumption that if I can't nail the "day" in question, I repeat it until I can. For week 3, day 1, it was 3 times; day 2 was repeated 6 times; day 3 is shaping up to be only 3 times. I'm sticking with column 3 so I have consistent guidelines.

I believe the every-other day approach keeps your (my) body fighting to generate muscle as opposed to storing fat (but that could just be my stubborn attitude).

All-in-all, for just 2 hours a week, I'm much stronger and it's only been about a month (no gym membership).

I'm also doing the 200 situps; how humbling, but at least that one's on track to complete in under 2 months! Must be my programmer's back.

However, doing two programs at once might be causing a resource shortage, leading to increased recovery time for the push-up challenge. Not too sure.

What keeps me going is my progress. Doing just 2 push-ups more each time, I know it's working.

dustbunny said...

For me, my rule was that if I didn't finish a week I would do the whole week again.

For me doing *less* pushups was the thing that finally got me to the finish line. But maybe it was a placebo effect. In any case when I allowed myself more recovery time my body responded postively. I've actually scaled back my general workout schedule on the theory that I should allow more recovery time in general.

Also possible that I'm just lazy, too. Good luck. Hopefully it takes you less than my 16 months. Look forward to updates.