push-up, redux
5 January 2011
In May of 2009, a buddy forwarded me a link to the One Hundred Push-Up Challenge. Basically, you start with as many push-ups as you can muster, then follow a regiment based on your initial amount, and, within a few weeks, you should be able to do 100 push-ups straight.
Intrigued, I was. I remember as a kid my dad saying that Herschel Walker, then a beast in the NFL, got so jacked and by doing only hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups every day, and he had never, ever entered a weight room. That’s cool, I thought. And then it ended there, as it certainly didn’t inspire me to start doing push-ups or sit-ups, but rather to have another TastyKake (I presume).
Anyway, I decided to give this challenge a go, and when I started, I did (I think) four push-ups. Just four. Yes, this is a distributingly low number for a 29 year old man who was not physically handicapped about the arms, chest and shoulders. But here’s the thing: I wanted to do them right. I know I could have done a lot more if I had cheated – if I had done them quickly, bending my elbows just a little bit, popping slightly down and popping quickly back up. But I did four, real, actual push-ups, taking it slow, getting down all the way, waiting a second or two, and then slowly rising back up. Four consecutive push-ups.
Six or seven weeks later, after sticking with the program and doing them the right way, I did 77 push-ups in a row.
So while I didn’t get to 100 straight (I sort of hit a wall around the 77, and never got higher, and eventually lost interest), it was a major, major help in raising my level of fitness/strength. I remember sitting at a bar with a buddy a few weeks into the program and crossing my arms and feeling something unusual on the back of my arm that had never been there before, this mass that caused me to question whether someone had secretly crazy-glued a smooth rock to my arm while I slept. Upon further inspection, I learned it was an actual tricep muscle, one that, for the first time, felt more like muscle than mashed potatoes. And around this time, a female friend, who didn’t know I was doing the program, saw me in a bar, regarded me, and said, “You look, like, bigger – but in a good way” and then she rubbed my chest, which was slowly transforming from simply being a home for my man boobs to a Physical Wonder To Marvel At While You Are Lying Below It, Being Penetrated And Having Multiple, Compound Orgasms.
The short of it is that while I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions, I’m back in the saddle with the 100 Push-Up Challenge. I started two nights ago, and though I won’t tell you my initial number, it was certainly higher than four, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to hit that 100 straight in a few weeks.
And I suggest that you, dear readers, give it a try. (Note: I recommend this only for males, because chicks like guys with broad chests, and not for women, because someone once told me that excessive exercising of the chest muscles will shrink a woman’s boobies, and if I am for anything in this life, it is for the preservation, expansion and growth of all boobies everywhere.) It’s really easy to do, kinda fun, and, shit, you can’t start off much worse than I did. Happy push-uping.
Intrigued, I was. I remember as a kid my dad saying that Herschel Walker, then a beast in the NFL, got so jacked and by doing only hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups every day, and he had never, ever entered a weight room. That’s cool, I thought. And then it ended there, as it certainly didn’t inspire me to start doing push-ups or sit-ups, but rather to have another TastyKake (I presume).
Anyway, I decided to give this challenge a go, and when I started, I did (I think) four push-ups. Just four. Yes, this is a distributingly low number for a 29 year old man who was not physically handicapped about the arms, chest and shoulders. But here’s the thing: I wanted to do them right. I know I could have done a lot more if I had cheated – if I had done them quickly, bending my elbows just a little bit, popping slightly down and popping quickly back up. But I did four, real, actual push-ups, taking it slow, getting down all the way, waiting a second or two, and then slowly rising back up. Four consecutive push-ups.
Six or seven weeks later, after sticking with the program and doing them the right way, I did 77 push-ups in a row.
So while I didn’t get to 100 straight (I sort of hit a wall around the 77, and never got higher, and eventually lost interest), it was a major, major help in raising my level of fitness/strength. I remember sitting at a bar with a buddy a few weeks into the program and crossing my arms and feeling something unusual on the back of my arm that had never been there before, this mass that caused me to question whether someone had secretly crazy-glued a smooth rock to my arm while I slept. Upon further inspection, I learned it was an actual tricep muscle, one that, for the first time, felt more like muscle than mashed potatoes. And around this time, a female friend, who didn’t know I was doing the program, saw me in a bar, regarded me, and said, “You look, like, bigger – but in a good way” and then she rubbed my chest, which was slowly transforming from simply being a home for my man boobs to a Physical Wonder To Marvel At While You Are Lying Below It, Being Penetrated And Having Multiple, Compound Orgasms.
The short of it is that while I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions, I’m back in the saddle with the 100 Push-Up Challenge. I started two nights ago, and though I won’t tell you my initial number, it was certainly higher than four, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to hit that 100 straight in a few weeks.
And I suggest that you, dear readers, give it a try. (Note: I recommend this only for males, because chicks like guys with broad chests, and not for women, because someone once told me that excessive exercising of the chest muscles will shrink a woman’s boobies, and if I am for anything in this life, it is for the preservation, expansion and growth of all boobies everywhere.) It’s really easy to do, kinda fun, and, shit, you can’t start off much worse than I did. Happy push-uping.
