one hundred pushups

I read about this 100-pushup program at my brother’s blog. It’s a methodical program designed to train you over six weeks to able to do 100 pushups without stopping, no matter where you’re starting from. My brother, his wife, and one of their daughters were going to start it in July. Then I read one of my nieces’ blogs and she said she was starting, too. I read all about the plan and it made sense to me. I could also tell it is intended to test the limits of human endurance. Sign me up. :-\

I told my great friend Melinda about it, and she thought it sounded good. She said she’d start, too. I told my wife about it, and she pshawed me, saying, “just because you get good at one exercise, that doesn’t mean you’re strong“. (Disclaimer: my wife pumps iron and is one of the strongest people I’ve ever met, man or woman.) Well, I still liked the idea of trying for it, so I started.

The program begins with an initial test. You do as many good-form pushups as you can, until exhaustion. That tells you what level you’re at, and then you use that along with your age to find the right place in the program for you start.

I did my initial test and got started. I travel a lot for my job, but I kept on doing it even in my hotel room when I was on the road. Basically, you do a certain number of sets of a certain number of reps in sequence every other day for the first two weeks, following the chart at the 100 pushups web site. It’s designed to build you up gradually.

I was impressed with my progression. At the end of two weeks, you do another exhaustion test. The number of non-stop pushups you can do at that point is part of how you determine your path in the next two weeks of the program. After having only been doing the program for two weeks, I was able to triple the number of pushups I could do without stopping.

But I guess the designer of the program overestimated how far the first two weeks would take me. I was keeping right on track – always exceeding the minimum mini-exhaustion sets along the way. The gap between my exhaustion test number and the minimum threshold required for starting week 3 is too big, though. I have actually read this on multiple blogs, too, so it’s not just me. I decided I’d just repeat week 2 (which is the advice at the web site) and see if that got me closer to the week 3 threshold. But I went back into it too hard and started getting a pain in my shoulder. That, and my travel schedule got more intense, which is no fun.

So I fell off-track. Bummer. I will start again this Monday. Melinda’s got her own story to tell, but her experience is very similar to mine – doing pretty well, then up a steep curve, then pain. Since a couple of weeks after first hearing about 100 pushups in July, I haven’t heard anything more from my family members about it. I know one of my nieces in Kansas got into week 4 (I think). Has anybody made it to the end? Can you do 100 pushups without stopping? No? How many can you do?

(That’s one of the official badges from the One Hundred Pushups web site. I don’t like it – there’s no way that’s good form. Look at where her hands are!)