I have a badge!!! 

-see blog sidebar-

For the past nine or so weeks I have been doing the one hundred push ups challenge.  The challenge is supposed to get you from a couple of good form push ups to one hundred of them in about six weeks.  It took me a little longer.  There were two or three days I had to repeat and the last week of the challenge took me about twelve days to finish.

The challenge is set up so that a person of any fitness level can participate but it gets a little rough by the last two weeks so you may want to check with your Dr to make sure you don’t have any health issues that would make doing the challenge dangerous. 

Things I have learned during the challenge -

Good form push ups are difficult.  This may be why so many people give up on doing push ups but there are ways to make them easier and allow you to build muscle at the same time.  If you just can’t do a regular push up try doing them against a wall.  This allows you to build some muscle and to practice the proper form.  Once you build up some muscle you can move down to a counter or bench and then eventually to the floor.  My knee still won’t hold for me to do them on the floor so I had to do my push ups for the challenge on a raised surface.  I still got a good workout and built some awesome muscles.

Push ups work everything.  Okay, maybe not every muscle but it often feels that way the day after my work out.  Push ups do work your arms, shoulders, chest and abdomen.  You also start to see results fairly quickly.  I noticed a difference in my arms and shoulders within a couple of weeks.  I also lost two inches off my waist without losing any weight and added some muscle to my chest.  

Push ups make you sore.  Like “ack, I can’t raise my arms over my head” sore.  I added five to ten minutes of yoga after my push up workout and that made a huge difference.  The yoga poses  of downward facing dog followed by cobra (or upward facing dog if you don’t have knee issues) are especially helpful.  A hot shower helps as does wearing sleeves over your upper arms for a while after the push ups.  For me, anything that keeps the muscles warm and also lets them cool down slowly seems to help.  The only soreness I have this morning is just a little ache in my shoulders and an achy knee.  (the aching knee is NOT common to push ups, mine is because of the injury)

It is okay to slow down and do a day more than once.  There were a couple of times when I felt I had hit my max in what I could do.  When that happened I just waited a couple of days and redid the sets I was having trouble finishing.  Each time this was all I needed and I was able to continue. Once I shifted my focus from ‘must do this in six weeks’ to ‘must finish this, however long it takes’ I did much better. 

The last week of the challenge is brutal.  I thought it was just me but people on my fitness board said the same.  In the last week you do 200 to 260 or more push ups for each day and it is rough.  I felt so bad after the second day of that week I thought I was coming down with the flu.  It was actually easier for me to do the 100 than get through all the sets on that day.   I also had to rest two or three days between each push up day to fully recover. 

I don’t really hate Steve Speirs.     Now that I am actually finished I think he is kind of awesome and send him a note of thanks for putting the challenge together and setting up the website for everyone to use.

Finally, I think the challenge was worth the time, effort and soreness.  I intend to try it again with floor push ups when I get enough muscle built up around my knee to do them without knee pain.  Until then maybe I’ll try military style on a bench or counter. 

Or maybe I’ll just have a cup of coffee and rest.

- Kit