Friday, April 9, 2010

Fifty

Hit a little personal milestone today. 50 of these.

This winter, after interrupting my shoveling the walk for the third day in a row to help a snowstuck driver at the corner, I was displeased by how much I felt like my lungs and body were about to explode. Now, I fenced in college, did a few years of Aikido, and since buying a house I've had decent stretches of sticking to a good free weight routine courtesy of the long-distance task mastering of my blog partner MeatAxe.

But that last year or so... Well, pretty much put any excuse in there - I've used 'em all. But, decision made as indicated, sometime in January I decided I was going to get to 100 Hindu Pushups by the end of the year. I wanted to go very incrementally, so I started at 1 and added 1 each day. Days that I feel strong and could do more, I don't - the regimen is 1 extra per day.

Pretty obviously, the first 10 or even 15 or so were pretty easy - I'm no stranger to pushups and although the Hindu pushups are harder and more involved, they are mainly just pushups.

But 20? 20 was hard. I started breaking into sets, varying the number of reps but always working toward the goal of set, 30-40 second break, set, 30-40 second break, etc. Some days I was weak and had to break it into sets no bigger than 10, some days I could ram out sets of 15+15+10. I had a week off from being sick and a bit injured (these things work the ENTIRE front slab of muscle on your body and more so - never thought I could injure my NECK doing a pushup - my 41st, to be exact) and that set me back, but today I was able to shakily type over to MeatAxe "15+15+10+10, 5 minutes".

That's 50, that's halfway there, and I'm feeling pretty good about that. Still have a bit of flab to transmogrify, move, or lose; but my wind is good, my strength is up, and I'm getting closer to making my set plateau 20 instead of 15. Maybe by the end of the year I can report to MeatAxe "20+20+20+20+20, ten minutes".

MeatAxe, by the way, does a workout that would make a Spetznatz trooper put ribbons in his hair, and he's been very tolerant and supportive of my efforts. Couldn't have done it without him - thanks, Axe.

UPDATE:

After discussions with my taskmaster MeatAxe and perusal of the YouTubes, it turns out I've actually been doing DiveBomber pushups, not straight Hindu pushups. I tried some straight Hindus this weekend to feel the differences.

1 comments:

MeatAxe said...

Nice job Smasher! 51 is pretty impressive, and the rate of improvement is even more impressive when you consider you started at 11.

You can take full credit for this, though. Instant message is easy. Staring at rep 29 out of 50 and muscling through it anyway is the hard part.

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