At the beginning of April, a gym-member friend decided to do a Push-up Challenge, and invited a group of us to join him. Basically, the first day was 25 push-ups, increasing 25 push-ups per day, 5 days a week; until 550 Push-ups is reached on Day 30. A number of us (stupidly) opted-in. The rules were full chest-to-ground, on-toes push-ups (even for us females), but they could be split up as much as you like over the day, as long as they all got done.
It was just frivolous, it was just for fun; and at the end of the day, it certainly wasn’t going to bring about World Peace. But it highlighted a few things, and not just about push-ups.
Day one, 25 push-ups, was pretty cruisy, and day two not so bad either. I clearly remember thinking ahead, and that I’d have to spread 100 over most of the day to get them done. I can do push-up on my toes, but getting that chest right to the ground was tough, and I was NOT used to doing any great numbers of them. But, I did manage 100 of them, then 200 of them. By which time, my thoughts started to turn to how I could drop and do 10 or 20 between training sessions; how many I should try to get done at gym before getting to work, and how to squish them into my working day. By 300, I was working on the theory that I could reward myself with my morning cuppa after I just knocked out another few sets of 20.
After my morning session at the gym one day, I managed to get 200 done around my other training, thinking that when I got to work I’d do another 75 before hopping in the shower there, then all I’d have left to do was another 100 at some point in the morning, which should be easy. Wow, only a couple of weeks earlier I was wondering how I’d do 100 in the day, now I was relieved that I’d ONLY have 100 left to do!
On the day we completed 425, I was excited because we only had 5 days left. Yep, only 2500 push-ups left! I did a quick count of how many we’d already done, which was 3825, and we weren’t even 2/3 of the way through –aaargh! And my body was starting to feel it.
I had originally thought once I’d gotten to this point, that I’d spread them out over the full day. But, while I did take longer, I just wanted them done so I could forget about them for the rest of the day. By the time we got to 475 push-ups, my upper back muscles were aching, my shoulders hurt, my abs were tight, my wrists and elbows had little tweaks, and I was over bloody push-ups. I continually thought about whether I’d recovered enough from the last set to do another, just to get them finished. But we only had three days to go in the challenge. A couple of us noticed that only a few people had been posting that they’d completed each day. Had they dropped out? Who was still going?
The last few days were tough. I didn’t get chance to get two full rest days in, only one. So backing up day after day with large numbers of push-ups was hard for me. When I woke up and fell out of bed onto the floor to resume “the position” for the first 25 of the day, my Traps were so stiff I could hardly lower down. Luckily they loosened up fast. And ironically in the last 2 days I got them done earlier in the day, than I had previously. Maybe it was the “finish-line” just there that I was aiming for; or maybe it was just the desire to get them over with. Either way, with 550 done by 8.30am on the final day, as well as a couple of other training sessions, I was pretty stoked to have finished. Hard for me to even contemplate that only 4 weeks earlier I was impressed with 50; and now I’d just bashed out 550!
So what did I learn from doing the push-up challenge?
• Because I could do a few push-ups on my toes, I thought it would be hard, but achievable, after all, we had all day. Once we got up around 200 pushups, I started to wonder if I could actually do the 550. Sometimes you have a false sense of confidence when you’ve never tried to push yourself at a particular thing. You don’t know what you don’t know, if you don’t know it.
• Nor do you appreciate how hard it is for those who are really good at it, until you’ve tried it yourself.
• Some days it was hard to fit around “life”. The challenge said 5 days in a row, then 2 days off. I often had to split the days off to fit in with work/other commitments, but I figured this was better than dropping the challenge altogether, and I still did the required amount of days. Sometimes you have to bend the rules a bit to make something happen, rather than using things as an excuse to quit.
• As I realised when I got to the day of 425, just when you think you close to your goal, you may suddenly feel a VERY long way away, but if you quit now, you did all that work for nothing.
• There are many perfectly viable, absolutely valid, reasons I could give for quitting this challenge. And after all, it’s nothing serious, it has no bearing on my life, it’s not like it will impact my choice of selection on an Olympic team, increase my income, make my friends/family love me more or help me in my work. And in this case, with overuse injuries possible, it could even be detrimental to my health, not help it. But then, the same reasons can be applied to just about any goal, if I want to an excuse to quit. What do YOU do?
• Having publicly committed to doing the challenge, and having others updating me with their progress, made me more want to stick with it.
• Just like so many things we try to achieve in life, the really hard work was weighted at the end, and it was tough going. Physically because my body was fatiguing when the big days were stacked one after the other; and mentally because I was just “over it”. Luckily in this challenge, the goal/timeline was well defined and I KNEW there was only a few more tough days left. In real life, often we don’t know how close we are, so we quit – maybe just before success.
• As the goal got closer, it took up more time, it took more planning, when to fit in pushups started to invade my thoughts throughout everything else I was doing, until they were done for the day. I think that’s called getting tunnel-vision focus; a requirement for achieving many goals.
• Some people admired my efforts. Others thought I was nuts and/or trying to show off. Others shook their heads, pointing out the negatives, such as possible fatigue and injury (as if I didn’t already realise that; or was it so they had their ready excuse to not join in?). Possibly all valid points and everyone are entitled to their opinion and desire to do things themselves. But if you are focussed ona goal, while it’s nice to have some support, often you won’t get it. Don’t let others stop you.
• My perception of “difficult” changed.I think this was the most important realisation for me. At first I thought completing 100 push-ups in a day would be tough. By the end, I was relieved when I only had another quick 100 to do. The goal posts moved. I stretched my comfort zone. So many times in life we need to not just see a bigger picture, but put ourselves out there and LIVE it, to realise we can be so much better.
But then, it was just a bunch of push-ups 😉