What I Learned to Do Push-Ups Every Day for a Month
In early January, I came across a video you may have seen of a young womandoing push-ups for 100 days . At first she is “thin”, but she is getting stronger. I wanted to do this. I did, and you can too.
Right before that, I only played sports occasionally – I have three kids in my life – so I felt pretty skinny at first. The push-ups were hard at first , but then it got easier. I’ve definitely gotten stronger. Here’s what I learned along the way.
Soreness shouldn’t stop you.
At first I could do full push-ups , but they were hard. I try to avoid them in my exercise regimes because if I do more than one or two sets, the next day I will have severe pain. So if I was going to do push-ups every day, I needed to be careful.
Luckily, I knew how to train despite the pain . You do not miss a workout; you just do them as lightly and carefully as you need to. On the second day, I only did a few sets at a time, and the same way on the third day. It took over a week to get rid of the pain completely, but my workload was light and I just focused on constant training. I knew that if I missed the day early, it would be difficult for me to convince myself to continue.
Consistency pays off
As tempting as it was, I never missed a day. I’ve also reduced my goal to the most important one: do at least one push-up every day (and film it).
Since I already had trouble finding time to work out in the gym , I knew that I had little hope of a daily long workout. I hesitated to sign up for any particular plan, even the One Hundred Push-ups procedure, as I would have to change it in the beginning because of the soreness.
Sometimes I did push-ups as part of my bodyweight workout , but most of the time I only did them during the working day, when I thought I needed to take a break. I set up Nagbot, to write to me every day that I can not forget.
You are improving faster than you think
I thought my first milestone would be doing more reps at a time. However, this is not exactly what happened. The first achievement I saw: my form improved.
I first showed fellow Vitals writer Stephanie Lee some of my push-up videos and asked for a form of criticism. She indicated that my elbows were swelling and my arms were spread wide, and she predicted that I would probably correct this automatically when I got stronger.
And so it happened. Even after a week, when I was still battling the disease, I noticed that I could put my hands right under my shoulders. I could also go down to earth instead of cheating halfway like I did before.
I didn’t do more reps, I did better . To keep this momentum going, I started trying new things. For example, I did push-ups with my feet on a chair , and recently moved to table height. I also asked my child to sit on my back, and if I push as hard as I can, I can lift him.
When I started out, I had no idea that I could improve so much. I’m thrilled to build on this dynamic and see where I am at the end of next month, or even a full 100 days from now.