M2M — Week 3–100 Pushups
This month I aim 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 3 of the 100 Pushup Challenge.
In case you missed them, you can also view my post from Week 1 (where I introduce the challenge) & Week 2.
Recap — 100 Pushups Attempt No 3
On Day 15, I recorded my third attempt at completing 100 continuous push-ups:
At this stage, I managed 75 pushups, which means I’m halfway to reaching 100 from my initial starting point of 52 pushups!
16.12.19 — Day 16 — Rest day
As I was feeling pretty exhausted from suddenly playing 3 high-intensity football sessions on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday last week, I decided to take the day off and rest a few knocks. See you tomorrow.
17.12.19 — Day 17 — Performance Dip
Today, for the first time in a while, I was not able to finish the pushup schedule I had set out to do.
My intended log:
- Set 1–40 pushups
- Set 2–44 pushups
- Set 3–47 pushups
- Set 4–40 pushups
- Set 5–30 pushups
Total: 201 pushups
What I managed:
- Set 1–40 pushups
- Set 2–44 pushups
- Set 3–38 pushups
- Set 4–29 pushups
- Set 5–28 pushups
Total: 179 pushups
There are two main reasons I struggled with this schedule:
- I always find it more difficult to complete the exercise if the biggest set (most push-ups) is in the middle rather than at the start of the exercise. Today, the biggest set was Set 3 (47 pushups), at which point I am usually starting to tire having already completed sets 1 & 2.
However, despite the psychological blow, introducing this type of difficulty is beneficial. By varying the order of the most demanding set, we are introducing progressive overload, which, as we discussed in depth in the post from Week 2, is the fundamental principle behind getting positive results from any workout or exercise - Pre-workout routine. As I look to maximise my workout, I’ve been experimenting with training at different stages of the day (e.g. as soon as I wake up vs midday vs evening).
Today I woke up, took a (hot) shower and immediately began exercising. Although I felt energised and focused after my workout, I had less strength than I usually do when working out later in the morning, once I’ve had a nutritious breakfast and spent 1–2 hours working.
Research seems to support both morning and evening workouts, so the deciding factor should be how you feel when doing it and whether you can engrain your workout into your routines. I think I’ll stick with midday workouts for now.
18.12.19 — Day 18 — Spontaneous training
Up to now, I have been sticking to a clear schedule when practising pushups. However, over the last couple of days, in an attempt to boost my max reps, I’ve started spontaneously getting up from whatever I’m doing and doing pushups until I max out… Of course, this is only really a possibility if I’m working from home, rather than, say, a crowded coffee shop. Now that would be an intriguing social experiment… How would people react?
Today, in addition to my standard 5-set pushup schedule, I did this three times, leaving at least a couple of hours between attempts. I managed between 65–75 pushups each time, meaning I’ve consolidated the progress made over the last two weeks.
This might not be great for my work productivity, but I believe it will help me push through to 100 pushups.
19.12.19 — Day 19 — Using full-blast Reggaeton to block out my inner pushup counter
In Week 1, I discussed how, by not knowing how much time was left when performing the plank exercise, I improved my ability to hold it longer, going past my mental limits. I believe that had I been able to see how long was left, these mental limits would have been reinforced and I would have given up faster.
When using a timer this is easy to implement — just keep it out of reach/sight. When doing pushups, however, I automatically keep count mentally of how many I’ve done. As I get closer to the mental target or a previous personal best (PB), my mind signals to my body that it can reduce its intensity and I run out of steam.
So today, I used full-blast Reggaeton music to block out my inner pushup counter (and any other thoughts — it’s very loud!). There hasn’t been any angry knocking from the neighbours yet either. Success.
The technique seems to have worked relatively well, helping me get to 77 pushups, a new PB:
20.12.19 — Day 20 — Rest Day
With the newly-implemented spontaneous pushups, my upper-body was feeling slightly tight today, so I took a day off apart from some light stretching. Tomorrow, I’ll try to beat my PB!
21.12.19 — Day 21 — Video Attempts 5 & 6!
Phew… A day of mixed emotions!
I woke up feeling ready to go after my day off yesterday, so I decided to ignore the energy dip I experienced upon waking in the morning on day 17 and kickstart the day by filming my latest attempt:
It was not a success… I thought I’d be able to get past 80 pushups, but instead, I crashed at 73! Considering that was less than I managed one week ago, it did not look good at this stage…
However, three hours later, having eaten breakfast and done some work, I decided to give it another go:
Success!
I’ve improved from 75 (Day 15) to 84 (Day 21)!
Now, with ten days to get to 100, I’m feeling 80% confident I can complete this challenge! In particular after the false-alert earlier today, I’m looking forward to the next week.
That brings Week 3 to a close. I now have ten days to go from 84 to 100 pushups…
Bring. It. On.
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