30 days and over 3250 pushups later…
18th May marked day 30 of my “30 days of 100 pushups/day” challenge. Since most people are interested in body transformation, here’s a pic of me I clicked earlier today:
If you’re looking for a before picture, then I’m sorry to disappoint you I didn’t click one. I wasn’t even sure if I had it in me to do pushups consistently for 30 days. I announced the challenge to my close contacts through a WhatsApp status on 19th April and then began posting weekly updates in the form of a blog post here on Medium.
Before we jump into the main objective of this post, here’s everything that happened in the last week of the challenge:
- Pushup count for the last 4 days of the challenge: 150, 165, 120, 155.
- I stuck with standard and decline pushups only.
- I set a minimum hard limit of 15 pushups per set. No matter whether it’s the first or the last set, I did 15 or more in each.
- I began adding a bit of Whey protein in my postworkout curd meal (details in Part 1).
- I paused squats for this week. Replaced it with more stretching and one core exercise.
Some interesting “stats” from the challenge:
- 30 kgs of curd and 2.6 kg of Muesli was consumed in total.
- Apart from 3250 pushups, 6000 jumping jacks and roughly 1000 squats were done.
- I clicked a sunset picture during each evening session. Will post them on Instagram (after joining).
So, last year I was watching a documentary about the great Mohammad Ali. This documentary was mainly an interview of a few boxers who had defeated Ali during his illustrious career. One of them spoke how he went from doing 100 pushups/day to 1000 pushups/day in the span of a month after he started training. In the clip from his match against Ali, his chest and shoulders looked fantastic. The importance of pushups was ingrained in my memory on that day.
Anyone can do 100 pushups!
That’s absolutely correct. First of all, you need to understand the idea of sets and reps. You don’t have to 100 in one go. Depending upon your current physical strength, even if you can do 5 that’s fine. Those 5 reps constitute 1 set. Now, you’ve to do 20 sets to meet the target. How do you proceed? After doing the first set, rest for 2–3 mins and try again. You’ll be able to do another set. Pause and continue again. Once you reach a point, you can’t do any more reps, congrats you’ve completed one session. If you check out the time, depending upon how much rest you took in between, it should be around 10–15 mins.
While you rest, you can continue with your day job. After a break of 3–4 hours, you should be ready to do another session. Continue until you meet the target, that’s it. At least that’s how I did it — although I could do ~10 in a set until week 3. If you can’t do standard pushups, do knee pushups. If you can’t do knee pushups, do wall pushups. Whatever you do, make sure you do it daily and cross the finish line of 100 — no cheat days.
I didn’t have any trainer, a set postworkout meal, or the confidence to complete the challenge when I started. I just took it one day at a time, and other changes followed accordingly. On some days around week 3, I nearly lost the motivation but somehow managed to convince myself to do the sets.
One lesson I’d like everyone to take away from my quest is the importance of CONSISTENCY — which is one trait we all can improve upon. No matter how big a challenge, if you break it into smaller chunks and work on it every day, there is a very high chance you’ll achieve it. You could inspire others in the process. Being consistent also ensure you don’t burn out.
In conclusion, when this lockdown situation is completely over, there will only be 2 types of people — people who are fitter and stronger than before and people who have an excuse. You’ve to decide which group you want to join. As far as my fitness quest is concerned, this challenge is not the beginning, this is not the end either, but definitely, it marks the end of the beginning as I set out to do more intense workouts. Cheers to you all. Take care!
If you found this insightful, you can read Part 1, 2, and 3 here:
Week 1: https://medium.com/@ThinkHims/1-week-and-700-pushups-later-e1b9751e76d1
Week 2: https://medium.com/@ThinkHims/2-weeks-and-1400-pushups-later-its-not-just-pushups-9523faba801c
Week 3: https://medium.com/@ThinkHims/3-weeks-and-2100-pushups-later-course-correction-1de7d0739d92
