Day 5: Rest

Sunday was a day of rest. The two programs (100 push-ups and 200 sit-ups) are each three days a week, so if I do them every other day, my week gets messed up if I don’t take a day off. I’m anal like that. I was out and about all day Sunday anyway, so I decided to make that my day off. That puts me on a schedule of Monday-Wednesday-Friday sit-ups and Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday push-ups.

Day 6: Sit-Ups

Conquered "Week 1, Day 2" of the program with relative ease. Managed 26 sit-ups during "Set 5," where you do the most you can without stopping. I didn’t have any of the abdominal pain that I felt last time, so that was a big plus. But it did make me wonder if I’m not pushing myself enough. Is no-pain-no-gain a real thing?

Day 7: Push-Ups

"Week 1, Day 3" of the program went smoothly, although I’m still doing "knee push-ups." Actually, I had a little trouble finding a time and place to do my push-ups! I find that I don’t really mind doing the sit-ups with people around, but I’m fairly embarrassed by my wimpy modified push-ups, and I don’t like to do them when I think someone may "catch me in the act." Which clashes with my need to do them in a carpeted area!

I actually posed this question to the comments of an article about barriers on Get Rich Slowly, written by Ramit Sethi. (Recent articles on popular blogs are a great place to pose questions, provided your question is on topic for the article.) One person suggest I roll up a towel and place it under my knees on the hardwood floor. Intriguing! I may try this next time, just to see if it works. But I suspect the towel might slip, and cause me to fall of my face. Remind me to put a pillow down during the test run!

Another commenter suggested a yoga mat. I’m not sure I’m quite to the point where I’m willing to buy any equipment for this, but maybe someday. (It would also give me an excuse to do more yoga on the Wii Fit!)

Kick or Keep?

One week down, it’s time to decide: is the Spring Fitness Challenge a habit I want to kick, or keep? Should I keep going beyond this week’s experiment?

I’m not going to bother with a list of pros and cons, because there aren’t many cons to list. It’s easy to do daily, easy to track, good for my health, and I don’t need to buy any extra equipment (if I can keep people out of the living room on push-up days). And the Spring Fitness Challenge is only six weeks long, so I’m not committing my life to anything. This habit is worth sticking with… at least for another week.

What Now?

Next week will be a new habit, so you’re wondering… will you ever get updates on the Spring Fitness Challenge? Sure. I’m not just going to leave you in the dark because the week is over. Everyone once in a while, we’ll check back in on my progress. And there will certainly be a wrap-up post when I reach the end of the six weeks. You can subscribe to the Starting This Week RSS feed to get all the updates on my habits.

You can also track my day-to-day progress on the Pushups Logger (click "situps logger" in the left sidebar to view my sit-ups stats).

Day 3: Sit-Ups

Based on my initial test, I either could have done the third column of week 1 (the hardest set of that week), or skipped ahead to Week 3 and done the first column of that. I decided to stick with week 1, to keep it in line with my push-up routine. I got through the column fairly easily, and was able to do far more than the minimum for the last set (the minimum was 14 - I stopped counting once I hit that and just kept going).

I’m still pleasantly surprised that I have any abdominal strength at all! I think this program will be easier for me overall - I have little doubt that if I stick with the six-week program, I’ll be able to do 200 sit-ups by the end. Maybe it’s a little early to be making such claims, but I feel good about making that claim.

But boy, did my abs hurt all day long after that! And into the next day, too. I was very, very thankful that the program only goes every other day.

Day 4: Push-Ups

My second try at the push-up exercises, "Day 2" of the program (for those of you following along at home). The sets increase a little each time, but I’m still not ready to move up to "real" push-ups, so I stuck with the modified knee push-ups.

I moved from the hardwood floors (pictured above) to a carpeted area of the house, and it made a huge difference. My knees are still not happy about these modified knee push-ups, but the carpet is better by far. Except, now I’m acutely aware of how much the carpet needs to be vacuumed!

My push-ups are still very weak, but I managed to squeak six modified push-ups out of the last set, so that brings my max up to six.

I’m using to "loggers" on the OneHundredPushups and TwoHundredSitups sites to track my progress. You can watch my logs, if you like, by clicking the link below. The number that appears as "max" represents the number of push-ups/sit-ups I was able to do in a row, without stopping, in "Set 5" of that day’s workout.

Pushups Logger (click "situps logger" in the left sidebar to view my sit-ups stats)

The sit-ups, by the way, are not the full-upper-body back-pain-inducing sit-ups that doctors recommend against, but actually the smaller, safer “crunches” that I did so many of in high school gym class. So I’m grateful for that part, at least.

Day 1

Yesterday, I kicked off my personal attempt in the challenge by taking the initial test for each: that is, doing as many push-ups and sit-ups as my body will allow.

It wasn’t pretty.

I could pull off even one standard good-form push-up. I had to resort to the modified “knee push-ups,” and even those, I can’t do very many of. This is the reason one of my friends calls me “Noodle Arms.” I have the upper body strength of a five-year-old.

Sit-ups I did a bit better on, even though my abdominal strength runs a close second in non-existence. I can do about 20 of them before I have to take a few quick breaths to keep going. Still pretty poor performance.

But that’s alright, in my book - everyone has to start somewhere, and I’m not going to get any better unless I work on it, which is what this program is for.

Day 2

Since each program (push-ups and sit-ups) requires you to do the workout just three days a week, I’ve decided to alternate which day I do what. For my first day after the initial test, I decided to start the push-up program. I’m still doing the modified “knee push-ups,” since I can’t even extort one normal push-up out of my Noodle Arms. Even with the modified push-up, I’m still in the basic/beginner column of the guide.

Speaking of the guide, it’s available for free on the One Hundred Push-Ups site. I downloaded the “pocket mod” version of it (pictured below), because I love pocket mods more than any sane person should. It’s really nice, because I can just put the pocket mod down in front of me while I do the push-ups, and tick off each level with a pencil during the mandatory rest breaks.

I got through the set just fine - the mandatory rest breaks help. But I’m skeptical of my own ability to keep this up for the whole six week program, let alone repeat it if I don’t get to the 100 push-up mark at the end of the six weeks. The other thing that’s got me worried is the poor state of my knees. I’ve always had trouble with them, and have avoided high-impact activities for that reason. So the modified knee push-ups are pushing pressure on them that I don’t feel comfortable with (literally). I hope to graduate to “normal” push-ups as soon as possible, to take the pressure off my knees.

Tomorrow: sit-ups!