Fit36.com

Busy week, busy weekend. I’ve been meaning to get this update written, but just haven’t found the time.

Hundred pushups

First and foremost, I successfully completed Week 3 of the hundred pushup challenge. I previously posted my Day 1 results. On Wednesday, I successfully completed Day 2 with the following numbers:

Required: 16-14-14-12-Max (at least 15)

Actual: 16-14-14-12-16

And then on Friday, I completed Day 3 with the following numbers:

Required: 20-15-15-12-Max (at least 16)

Actual: 20-15-15-12-18

Best of all, I did this while sticking to the prescribed breaks (60 seconds on Monday, 90 seconds on Wednesday, and 120 second on Friday). It was tough, but doable. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I’m still languishing back in Column 1, which means that I’ll probably end up repeating some weeks before I actually “do the hundred.” Nonetheless, things are moving along nicely.

Food and drink

While I’m not willing to tackle an entire month of drinking only water, I managed to make it through a couple of days this past week drinking nothing but water. Not a huge deal, but it cut out a good bit in the way of calories on those days. I also packed a lunch twice, which two more times than normal (pathetic, I know). Going forward, I’ll probably experiment with more “water only” days and will also work to decrease the frequency of eating out — as I noted previously, this is probably my biggest health and fitness vice.

While I made some progress with Vice #1 this week, I succumbed to Vice #2 (tequila) this weekend, as we had a few margaritas on both Saturday and Sunday evening. It’ll be interesting to see what my weight looks like at my weekly weigh-in tomorrow morning.

Other exercise

In other news, I rowed Friday night for the first time (other than some short warmup sessions earlier in the week) since I tweaked my back. I did a 1 km warmup, did some stretching, and then did a fairly easy 6 km. I can tell I’ve fallen out of the rowing groove (due to vacation and my back injury) as my heart rate was up throughout the workout, and I was a bit sore the next. Regardless, it felt good to get back on the horse.

I’ve also been using our Life Fitness X5 elliptical for some cardio work while trying to rest my back. In fact, I managed to squeeze in three or four 30 minute sessions in the past week. It gets the heart pumping, but doesn’t do much for the upper body, so I coupled it with some dumbbell work on Monday/Wedesday evening (after my pushups).

Oh, and we’ve had friends in town this weekend (which partly explains the tequila), so I spent a good bit of time playing Wii Sports today. Mostly boxing and tennis. Fun was had by all, and pretty much everyone worked up a sweat.

That’s a bit of an odd title, I know, but I’m not sure how else to word it. Given the recent fascination with pushups, I got to wondering about how much weight you’re actually moving when you do a pushup.

Asked another way:

What’s the bench press equivalent of a pushup?

Of course, these are rather different exercises, and the weight distribution changes as you move through the pushup motion, so it’s not possible to directly compare the two in a particularly meaningful way. Nonetheless, I’m curious about how much weight you’re moving up and down when you do a pushup.

Armed with nothing more than my curiosity and a scale, I set out to answer this question.

The data

I started by weight myself — 236.6 pounds. I then dropped into a fully-extended pushup position with my hands on the scale (albeit with my hands closer together than normal). The reading on the scale? 154 pounds. I then moved to the ‘bottom’ position of the pushup (again, with my hands close enough together to get them on the scale) and took another reading — 178 pounds.

The bottom line

Based on the numbers above, it appears that you’re moving approximately 65% of your body weight at full extension, whereas this number goes up to roughly 75% when you drop to the bottom position.

Of course, these numbers depend on a variety of factors — for example, arm placement, how far you drop during the pushup motion, and the distribution of weight over your body (if you’re “top heavy,” you’ll be pushing proportionally more weight). Nonetheless, it appears that you are moving roughly 70% of your body weight when doing pushups.

What about knee pushups?

A common way for people to start out when doing pushups is to do “knee pushups.” How much easier are these than regular pushups? I explored that, too, though only for the fully extended position. In this case, I was at roughly 116 pounds in the fully extended position, which is roughly 50% of my body weight or 75% of the “regular” pushup load.

So there you have it… When doing “normal” pushups, you’re moving somewhere in the ballpark of 70% of your body weight, whereas this decreases to just over 50% of your body weight with knee pushups.

A week after failing miserably on the first day of Week 3 of the 100 pushup challenge, I’m pleased to report that made through W3D1 this afternoon (while at work, no less!). After failing last Monday, I fell back to Week 2 and focused on obeying the time limits for the rest periods and really pushing myself on the max rounds. I ended up finishing the week strong (aside from a minor back injury sustained while rowing) and was ready to tackle Week 3.

So… How did I do?

Required: 15-12-12-10-Max (at least 15)

Actual: 15-12-12-10-16

While my arms were getting a bit shaky by the end, I ultimately managed to complete all five rounds. I also managed to keep my breaks to a tight 60 seconds, so I think that I’m officially back on track.

As a side note, I’ve also created a log page to keep track of my progress as work through the challenge.

Over the weekend, I got to thinking about what my biggest vices are when it comes to staying healthy. All in all, I’d have to say that my number one weakness is eating out at lunch time. For whatever reason, I really enjoy escaping the office and grabbing some lunch. Unfortunately, this often translates into less healthy meals than if I simply packed my lunch (not to mention the additional cost). On top of this, we tend to eat out as a family once or twice on weekends.

My other vice (at least in terms of calorie consumption) is that I enjoy high-end (100% agave) tequila, and I actually drink it relatively frequently. While tequila is purported to have a number of health benefits, it’s also packed with calories. And if you mix it? Even more calories.

What about you? What are your vices?

In the interest of generating some participation, I’m going to turn this into a meme. Here are the rules:

1. If tagged, write up a short article detailing your biggest health/fitness vice(s).
2. Link back to whoever tagged you from somewhere within your article.
3. Tag 4-6 more people by linking to them at the end of your article (and be sure to let them know that they’ve been tagged).

That’s it. As for me, I’m tagging the following people:

JD (or Mac) @ Get Fit Slowly
Andrew @ Andrew is Getting Fit
Jim @ Journal of Healthy Living
Israel @ Fat Man Unleashed
Lazy Man @ Lazy Man and Health
NCN @ No Calories Needed
MBH @ Deflabbify

(If you want to play along and didn’t get tagged, feel free to tag yourself.)

Friday afternoon, I decided to head upstairs for a nice Independence Day row. I did my usual 5 minute warmup (light rowing, roughly 1 km) and then got off the erg to stretch. Unfortunately, I got distracted (by what I can’t recall) and ended up coming back to the erg for my workout without actually stretching. I did a fairly standard 6 km row but, by the end, I had pain in my lower back.

The discomfort was just above the belt, midway between the spine and my side. Nothing too severe, but definitely uncomfortable, especially when I would exert myself or twist the wrong way. So… It looks like rowing is out for the next few days. The good news is that it’s already starting to feel better, and I can still do pushups and use the elliptical with no problems whatsoever.

Now I just need to remember to stretch properly.

As I noted earlier in the week, I experienced a setback in the 100 pushup challenge when I passed the Week 2 exhaustion test, but failed on Day 1 of Week 3. I think a couple of things factored into my failure.

1. I didn’t really push myself on the max rounds during Weeks 1 and 2. In every case, I exceeded the required number, but I probably could’ve squeezed out one or two more reps. I think that pushing myself a bit harder would speed my progress.
2. I didn’t pay close enough attention to the clock. More than anything, this challenge is about endurance, and I’m convinced that you have to stick fairly close to those “minimum” rest times if you want to succeed in the long run.
3. I did my exhaustion test on Sunday and then picked up with Week 3, Day 1 on Monday, with no rest in between. In the future, I’ll either do the exhaustion test on Saturday (following a Friday workout) and then rest on Sunday before launching into the new week, or I’ll do the test on Sunday and then take a day off before doing the next week on Tu/Th/Sat.

So… How did my workouts go the rest of this week?

I ended up dropping back to Week 2 so I could pay closer attention to items 1 and 3, above. Here’s how it worked out:

Week 2, Day 2 (Again)
Required: 11/9/7/7/Max (at least 10) — 90 second breaks
My Results: 11/9/7/7/16
Comments: I’m pretty pleased with this performance overall, in that my max reps went up from 11 last time to 16 this time.

Week 2, Day 3 (Again)
Requirement: 10/10/8/8/Max (at least 10) — 120 second breaks
My results: 10/10/8/8/20
Comments: Here again, I’m quite pleased with my progress. My max reps went up from 15 to 20. In fact, my max round, which was done following 36 pushups spread across the preceding four sets, was 2 better than my exhaustion test this past Sunday. Hopefully I’m now ready to tackle Week 3.

As many of you are aware, we were on vacation last week, returning this past Sunday. Upon our return, I promptly fired up the DSL modem and checked in on things. Unfortunately, an hour or so later my wife reported that our Skype phone, her e-mail, and the web weren’t working. Upon hearing this, I headed upstairs to our office/home gym and was greeted by madly blinking lights on the DSL modem. After calling tech support, I learned that our modem was dead. While they offered to overnight a replacement to us, it was Sunday so it wouldn’t ship until Monday, with an ETA of Tuesday afternoon.

While I have an unlimited data plan on my Palm Centro and can use it as a modem for my laptop, we get crappy cell service throughout our house and I couldn’t handle anything more than an occasional check of my e-mail while standing by the window, so… I ended up getting to bed a heck of a lot earlier than normal. And on Monday night? The same thing happened. I was in bed by 10PM and got a great night’s sleep. And then it happened…

The replacement modem showed up and I promptly returned to my old ways of staying up way too late and getting too little sleep. I was up late Tuesday night and am headed for another late night tonight. In my defense, we lead an extraordinarily busy life. I have a full time job, we have four young kids, and we also run a side business consisting of a number of web sites. Given that my days are taken up by work, and my evenings by the kids (and a bit of exercise), the online stuff is relegated to late nights.

The good news is that an evening workout gives me the juice to make it through ’til bed time. The bad news is that I’m wiped out in the morning and have a hard time getting going.

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 of 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.

We just got back from vacation, and boy was it hard to maintain any sort of healthy routine while we were on the road. As I noted previously, just about the only workout “equipment” that I had at my disposal was the floor and the great outdoors. Given that rowing is the centerpiece of my fitness routine, this made it tough to stay in the groove.

I actually anticipated problems with maintaining my exercise regime while we were away. While I went to the trouble of finding a local club that had Concept2 rowers, I knew in the back of my mind that I’d wind up slacking off while we were gone, and I never seriously considered trying to talk my way in to the club to squeeze in a row.

My recent addition of pushups to my workout repertoire did, however, give me a small amount of consistency since pushups can be done pretty much anywhere. But aside from that, all bets were off. My workouts ended up consisting of some hill running one day, a short (flat) run another day, and a couple of brisk three mile walks. I also did my pushups as dictated by the Hundred Pushup Challenge.

Making healthy food choices was also a challenge while we were no the road. We wound up dining out relatively often, and not always at the healthiest restaurants. Moreover, we spent most of the week in a group setting, such that the cooking (and menu planning) duties rotated with other members of our extended family. Thus, our food choices were often dictated by others.

The End Result

While I’m not explicitly trying to lose weight, I do try to keep an eye on the scale. Upon our return, I was pleased to learn that my weight had held steady, and maybe even decreased a bit. I also made reasonable progress in term of pushups, though I had hoped to emerge from the week with a few more reps under my belt.

It remains to be seen what effect the layoff had on my rowing, but I suspect that it will actually be somewhat beneficial. Though I was experiencing a bit of lower back fatigue before we left, I feel pretty good right now. Of course, I’ve fallen back in terms of meters rowed, but my distance goals are really rather arbitrary and not particularly meaningful.

Perhaps the biggest lesson that I learned from all of this is the importance of just doing something to stay on track while you’re on the road. While I gave myself a break, I didn’t throw in the towel entirely. I still tried to eat healthy (most of the time), I kept an eye on my alcohol intake, and I also made sure that I got a bit of exercise.

In the end, I may not have progressed, but I didn’t really slide back, either.

Since we’re still on vacation, I’m not going to do much more today than put together a quick workout update.

Here’s the executive summary:

Short run on Sunday, pushups on Monday and Wednesday, and a three mile walk on Tuesday.

As for the 100 pushup goal, things are still going well. Monday’s schedule called for 9-8-6-4-Max (at least seven). I completed all sets with a 60-70 second break between each, and manage 10 reps on my max set. Wednesday’s schedule called for 11-9-7-7-Max (at least ten). Things were a bit more difficult on Wednesday, and I didn’t track my break as closely. The prescribed break was 90 seconds per set, and I’m pretty sure that I went well over that. In the end, I managed 11 reps on my max set.

So… Assuming that I succeed on my next workout, I’ll re-test after this week is done and then press on with Week 3.

In other news, I managed to develop a blister on the back of my right heel earlier this week thanks to a new pair of shoes. Nothing major but, combined with the fact that we’re on vacation, it’s given me a good excuse to slack off this week.