M2M — Week 2–100 Pushups
This month my aim is to complete the first two challenges of my Month to Mastery (M2M) accelerated learning program. These are:
- memorise the order of a shuffled deck of playing cards in under four minutes
- complete one continuous set of 100 push ups
In this post, I’ll be breaking down my methodology, learnings and attempts from Week 2 of the 100 Pushup Challenge.
In case you missed it, you can view my post from Week 1 here, where I introduce the project, experiment with different training techniques and explain the importance of rest days.
Recap — 100 Pushups Attempt no2
On Day 8, I recorded my second attempt at reaching 100 pushups. Here’s the video:
As covered in this post, I managed 65 pushups, with a 13 pushup increase from Day 1! Let’s see we can conjure up in Week 2.
09.12.19 — Day 9 — Recovery
I’m a little frustrated today. After feeling great about the progress made last week, I woke up feeling soreness in my chest and biceps. Up to now I’ve been focusing my training on increasing my total pushup tally over 5 sets, rather than testing my max count. As a result, my body is not used to the intensity required when drastically increasing reps.
In terms of the challenge, I need to be patient and test different methods for improving my rate of recovery, as this will dictate my ability to progress. This is particularly relevant due to this challenge’s combination of physical element and short time frame. Cold showers might need to make an appearance into my routines.
Who’s idea was this again?
10.12.19 — Day 10—Progressive Overload
Here’s my log for the day
- Set 1–36 pushups
- Set 2–42 pushups
- Set 3–38 pushups
- Set 4–33 pushups
- Set 5–24 pushups
Total: 173 pushups
You may have noticed that instead of repeating the same pushup routine every day, I’ve been gradually increasing the number of reps per set (118 on Day 1 vs 173 today).
This is a technique called progressive overload, and is the fundamental principle behind getting positive results from any workout or exercise.
The progressive overload principle states:
In order for a muscle to grow, strength to be gained, performance to increase, or for any similar improvement to occur, the human body must be forced to adapt to a tension that is above and beyond what it has previously experienced.
To summarise further:
For the body to improve, you must increase the demands being placed on it.
At the gym, that demand might be increasing the weight you are lifting or adding an extra set in. This approach is simple in theory, yet when it comes to applying it many people (myself included) fall into the trap of reaching a specific goal before easing off and creating mental barriers to progress.
Of course, at some point there are physiological limits to further improvement. Otherwise, bodybuilders would be able to lift 10000 kg for 10000 reps, which is clearly impossible. However, the vast majority of us haven’t reached that point yet. So keep changing it up. Imagine you’re trying to catch your body off-guard (after proper stretching of course).
11.12.19 — Day 11— The Importance of Sleep
For the first time since I got back from Peru last week, I woke up feeling properly rested. It was great. Previously, I had struggled to get to sleep before 1am and usually woke up several times during the night. This led to lower quality sleep, which is not good news. At all.
Healthy sleep, both in terms of length and quality, is critical to our physical, mental and social wellbeing. However, our sleep quality is affected by numerous factors, including evening exposure to blue light from electronic devices, the bedroom’s thermal environment and a healthy bedtime routine.
In response, I’ve started taking small measures towards improving my sleep such as:
- leaving my phone and laptop charging outside my room
- using an actual alarm clock set to the same time every morning
- buying a sleep mask. This one is amazing, honestly!
If you’re constantly tired, I’d recommend analysing and adapting your sleep routines.
12.12.19 — Day 12 — Back to Football
As you can see in the log below, I‘m continuing to implement progressive overload into my training.
- Set 1–49 pushups
- Set 2–39 pushups
- Set 3–36 pushups
- Set 4–34 pushups
- Set 5–30 pushups
Total: 188 pushups
Today also marked my return to football training after nearly two months away. It was a welcome change to take part in a (social) physical activity that worked the lower body rather than primarily my arms and chest.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to ease back into it gradually as my team has a quarter-final cup game on Saturday and my old university team has been invited back to our departmental tournament on Sunday. Full steam ahead. Perfect.
13.12.19 — Day 13— To Gym or Not To Gym
I’m facing a dilemma.
In order to do more consecutive pushups, I need to get stronger. Usually, the fastest way to get stronger would be to go to the gym and complete an upper body workout. However, having been away from the gym the last 2–3 months, I’m painfully aware that the first 1–2 sessions back usually result in intense soreness to my chest, back and arms as my muscles recover. I don’t really have time to take several consecutive days of rest.
To illustrate this point, after training my lower body for the first time yesterday, my calves and hamstrings feel very tight. And that was just a training session rather than a workout.
I’ll give this some more consideration once all the football is out of the way.
14.12.19 — Day 14— Rest day
I took the day off today in preparation for tomorrow’s attempt at a PB (Personal Best). Hopefully it was worth it.
15.12.19 — Day 15— Video Attempt no3
Today I filmed my third attempt at 100 continuous pushups. As a recap of where we stand:
- Attempt 1 (Day 1) → 52 pushups
- Attempt 2 (Day 2) → 65 pushups
Here’s the video:
I’ve improved from 65 (Day 8) to 75 (Day 15)!
This means I’m essentially halfway to my goal of 100 pushups, which is a great motivator!
However, looking back at the video critically, I’m not satisfied with my range of motion for several of the pushups. I should have gone down further, engaging the muscles more. Having looked at a few pushup tutorials for comparison, I might also need to slightly adjust the position of my hands. I will work on these aspects over the next week.
Time to crank it up even more now.
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