One week of the Spring Fitness Challenge - DONE! The question is… do I plan to stick with it?
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).
I am doing this challenge too… stick with it, i think it will be worth it in the end… or i hope i will be
I think a spring fitness challenge is an excellent idea, but I have my doubts about only including two exercises. It only hits a very tiny group of muscles in the body, completely neglecting the most important part- lower body.
Have you been doing any cardio as well?
@Blake - I don’t get too much exercise most of the time, although my parents have a Wii Fit, so I do get some time in on that, in addition to frequent hiking. Is it a full exercise regime? Not in the least, but it’s a start.
Makes sense. Good luck with the continuation of this and on your new habits.