When last I wrote about the Hundred Pushup Challenge, I was two-thirds of the way through week two, and hoping to finish strong. Week 2, Day 3 (completed this past Friday) was challenging, but I made it through.
Upon our return from vacation on Sunday, I flopped down on the floor to do my “exhaustion test” and ended up cranking out 18 (vs. the ten that I did on my initial test). All in all, this 80% improvement made me pretty happy. That is, until I realized that I had fallen back from Column 2 to Column 1.
No matter, I told myself. I made it through the first two weeks, passed the exhaustion test, and advanced to Week 3. Success. Unfortunately, that success was short-lived…
The goals for Week 3, Day 1 were 15-12-12-10-Max (at least 15) with a 60 second break between rounds. As others have noted, this week is much tougher than the first two. Much tougher. So tough, in fact, that I failed.
I made it through the first four rounds, but I was feeling it by the end. I then proceeded to fail on the “Max” round with a total of just 10 reps (vs. the minimum 15) even though I stretched that last break out to 90+ seconds. Now I’m trying to decided what to do…
Drop back to the Week 2 workouts for Wednesday and Friday and the re-test at the end of the week before going on, or suffer through the remainder of the Week 3 workouts and then do them over again next week?
Right now I’m leaning toward repeating the remainder of Week 2, paying close attention to the clock, really pushing myself on the max rounds, and then re-testing. That approach just seems less de-moralizing than pushing forward with workouts that I know I’m doomed to fail.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I would suggest you go back to week 02 but switch to column 3 based on your exhaustion test.
I had to repeat week 01 so I’m really not looking forward to week 03.
Maybe it’s because I just barely squeaked out the sets on Monday, and have spent the time since then recovering from the soreness, but I’m seriously reevaluating this whole project. The soreness from the pushups has kept me from doing regular yoga. And I just don’t think that’s a good thing. I will probably continue with a less strict regimen (sets of 10, perhaps), but as for this 100-pushup challenge, I think this is where I get off.
wow, you’re scaring me, I start week three next week.
Yeah, i never thought this was going to be easy, but it sure sounds like week 3 steps it up a notch. I would probably do week two over again, and do it as andrew suggests?
I too failed with day one of week 3. I like Andrew’s idea of going back to week 2, column 3–I think I might have to do that.
i made the mistake of running before both push up workouts on Day 1 and Day 2….and failed on the last on the last round.
however, on Thursday I did the push ups before going for my run and managed to get through all five rounds.
good luck whatever you decide to do next week. i guess the lesson i’ve learned is you need every ounce of energy to have a successful push up workout.
–steve
–www.hundredpushups.com
Steve: The other thing that I’ve learned is that I need to push myself more on the max round of each workout in order to be ready for the next week. I was exceeding the max threshold, but not really pushing myself ’til I dropped. I think I would’ve been in better shape if I had pushed harder in Week 1 and Week 2. Plus, I did my exhaustion test on Sunday and then launched into Week 3 on Monday without a rest day. Oh well, I’m still making progress.