One Hundred Pushups: Day 7 (Change-up and Sinker Edition) |
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I love watching baseball. Like most people from Boston, I particularly love watching the Red Sox. Currently they have a relief pitcher named Chris Smith who throws nothing but change-ups. He might throw three at a time. His fastball is his third best pitch. Where am I going with all this? Well, my Day 7 of my 100 pushups quest was a bit like a baseball game on Monday.
It started on Sunday night. My wife said, “Honey, I think I’d like to try that 100 pushups thing as well. We can do it together. Will you wait for me to do it?” I had suggested it to her way back when and this seemed to be a reasonable request, so I agreed. Monday came along, and I did my typical swimming routine in the morning. I got a little lost in my work and looked up to see my wife had come back from her Body Pump class at the gym. Now I knew she wasn’t going to be in any condition to do her push-ups, but I asked to make sure. I was right, she would have to start the program another day. As far as health goes, if you are going to skip exercise for more exercise, that’s hard to argue with.
So there was the change-up… I had switched my swim and push-up routine. That lead to the sinker… I had used up so much energy swimming that I couldn’t complete Day 7 of the program.
Maybe it wasn’t the swimming. When I look at the program I think there might be a flaw. At the end of week two, I did 34 push-ups in my exhaustion test. That set me up for a week three, where I start off with a set of 25. That 25 in the first set took it’s toll by the 4th set when I could barely do ten. There was no hope of me finishing off with another 25. It got me thinking. What if during my exhaustion test, I had been able to do 26 push-ups? That would have put me in the range to do 25 and the start end, pretty much the maximum effort I would give if I just had to do one set.
Where do I go from here?
It makes little sense for me to go to Day 8 today. Instead, I will repeat Day 7. If I get Day 7 down, I’ll move to Day 8 on Friday. Next week, I’ll restart this week again in hopes of doing days 7, 8, and 9. If successful, I’ll move onto Week 4.
I’m pretty disappointed have to repeat this week 3. At the same time, I realize the benefit of building up a stronger base that will help carry me through the rest of program.
Photo Credit: Doug Greenberg
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This post deals with:100 pushups, baseball game, Exercise, health, maximum effort, push ups, pushups
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PropellerNext: My Health Week in Review (and Happy Fourth of July)
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:13 am
I am not sure repeating the day is the thing to do… the instructions say to repeat a week if you don’t succeed not the day… Each day is a little different and adds a little something extra… Even if you can’t complete d1, 2, or 3 from the week doing the different sets may better prepare your for the repeat version of the week.
Thoughts?
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:52 pm
When you fail on day 1 of the week, then doesn’t repeating the week mean repeating that day again? If I can’t do day 1, then how far would I get on day 2? One can’t complete “the extra” until they’ve done “the standard.”
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:46 pm
I failed the first day of week 3 and dropped back to week 2 for the remainder of the week. I’ll re-test and give week 3 a try again next week. In the mean time, I’m really pushing my self on the max rounds (much moreso than I have been) and paying much closer attention to the timing of the breaks.
July 3rd, 2008 at 2:31 am
Ive gotten a little muddled along this pushup way but agree as you said, LM, it’s all about building a strong base to I can continue pushing upward AFTER this is all done (because it will end, yes? :))
M.
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:10 am
Nice progress on the push ups program. Keep it up.
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:01 am
I think I’d repeat that day again, and if I can’t get through it again, I might repeat the previous week?
July 7th, 2008 at 5:40 am
I did my exhaustion test the day after week 2 and got 26… I did this because I did not want to get out of sync with my normal push-up schedule. Started week 3 on column 3 and failed on the first set of 17 and the max set. I plan on repeating week 3, but for my day 2 (and when I do day 3 tomorrow) I switched to the 2nd column and was able to complete w/o failure. I am not upset about failing the first day because I added 6 pushups to my overall push-up total for the workout (from 74 to 80)
If you look at the workouts, either you are already close to doing 100pu and will not fail or you “will” fail at some point. If you look at the minimum push-ups from W2D3 to W3D1 the number goes from 69 to 99! You are to add 30 push-ups to your work out after an exhaustion test and a couple days break! Looking at W3D3 to W4D1 you go from 121pu to 111pu.
I believe this program will work… it seems to be working for me. Going from column3 to column2 for my day 2 allowed me to go up to 91 push-ups for my total work out. I also added on an extra set of 20 because my daughter distracted me and I forgot where I was in the workout.
When I started this workout less than 3 weeks ago, I had 25 for my initial test. There was basically no way I could do another set after that. Now, yesterday, I added on a set of 20 just because I thought I might have screwed up and I was able to do it better than the first 20 I did in my initial test.
Good luck with it.