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I’ve been lax about updating here, but that doesn’t mean I’ve slacked off (as much) in the real world. I’m still pushing forward with my pushups, still rowing, and still using the elliptical. The latter two have been a bit less regular than I’d like, but it is what it is. Soccer season has started. We have three kids playing and are coaching one team (plus helping with another) so the week is much more fragmented than normal.

Anyway, the point of all of this is to simply report that I’ve hit a plateau of sorts when it comes to pushups. I ran headlong into Week 5 and haven’t been able to make it through. I went through it (Column 1) in full the first time and fell short by a few reps on the max round each time. In hopes of rectifying this, I went back and added in my dumbbell routine on my pushup days (in the evenings following all other exercise). I also decided to repeat Day 1 a couple of times. I finally managed to complete it this past Friday, but that was by taking longer than the prescribed breaks, and a whole lot of struggling.

With that (minor) success in the back of my mind, I decided to tackle Week 5 again starting yesterday. Sadly, it didn’t go as well as I had hoped. I actually made it through, but I cheated by stretching the breaks and I ended up making it through the final thirty by raising my hips and arching my backside up for a brief respite on two different occasions (once at 20 and again at 25 reps). While I didn’t break down and touch the ground with anything other than my hands and my toes, I can’t help but feel as if I cheated.

Anyway, I’m sure I’m being too hard on myself, but it’s not much fun to get stuck in a rut and keep repeating the same thing without any real progress. Kinda reminds me of this…

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

- Benjamin Franklin

Perhaps the days of rapid progress are over with. Maybe I’ve come so far so fast by simply training the muscles that I already had. Assuming that I’ve reached my “natural” limits, perhaps I’ve slowed down because I need to start growing additional muscle to proceed any further. Who knows.

Like I said, it’s not a whole lot of fun. But what’s a guy to do? I think I’ll start by mixing things up a bit to see if I can break through. I’ll probably continue with the prescribed pushup workouts, but get a bit more creative with the dumbbells in hopes of making some progress.

This week, I’m embarking on Week 5 of the one hundred pushups challenge.

Required: 30/24/22/20/30+

I breezed through the first 30, had no problems with the next 24, started feeling it in the 3rd set (22), and managed to make it through the 4th set (20). Throughout the early sets I stuck tightly to the 60 second breaks, but I ended up taking an extra 30 seconds prior to the final set. I managed to make it up to 24 in the final set, but couldn’t squeeze out any more. But still, that’s 120 pushups.

Actual: 30/24/22/20/24

Looks like I’ll be repeating Week 5 again next week.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Since we’re out of town on vacation, I don’t have access to my usual workout gear. Thus, I have to make do with what’s available. In this case, I have the floor and the great outdoors.

I started out by flopping down and doing Week 1, Day 3 of the One Hundred Pushups training program. The numbers for the day were 10-8-8-5-Max (at least 10). I did this much earlier in the day than normal, and wasn’t really in the groove. Nonetheless, I powered through (including 12 in the “max” round vs. the required 10) for a grand total of 43 pushups.

For the week, I did 110 pushups and completed all three workouts without any problems. My back is definitely feeling better, so… Given these results, it looks like I’ll be advancing to Week 2 come Monday.

Next up, cardio. Like I said, I pretty much have just the floor and the great outdoors at my disposal right now. Unfortunately, I hate running (that’s a topic for another post entirely) but I wanted to do something a bit more intensive than walking. Thus, I opted for running hills. Yes, it’s running, but it’s a lot more challenging than plain old running, so I can get more intense workout in less time. Plus, the increased challenge makes it more mentally tolerable.

There’s a reasonably steep (albeit not terribly long) hill near here, so I headed over and proceeded to run up it (and walk back down) sixteen times. I didn’t push it too hard, as it’s been a long time since I’ve run hills, and I didn’t want to hurt myself. That said, I succeeded in getting my heart pumping and my legs burning.

That’s it for now. I’ll press on with the pushups in the coming week and will squeeze in whatever else I can. Since we’re on vacation, posting will probably be a bit sporadic until the end of June.

I’ve spent the better part of today running around trying to tie up a bunch of loose ends before we leave for vacation. Thus, my workout plans largely got squashed. However, I did manage to set aside a few minutes this evening for my pushups. Today’s workout was 9-8-6-5-Max (at least 7) and it went quite well — a good bit easier than Day #1.

I’m still dealing with some fatigue in my lower back from rowing, but skipping out on my rowing session for today definitely made things easier. I blew through the first four sets with roughly 90 seconds between each, and then knocked out ten more for my “max” round vs. the required seven. That’s a grand total of 38 pushups. Not a ton, but certainly nothing to sneeze at.

We’ll have to wait and see how Friday goes, but I’m fairly confident that I won’t be repeating Week #1.

Just a quick update to say that I’ve officially completed day #1 of the One Hundred Pushups training program. My plan has been to mix these workouts in with my rowing regimen rowing, so I did my initial pushup test shortly after an 8km row, and only managed to do ten before my form started to break down.

Given my initial performance, the first workout was supposed to be 7-7-5-4-Max (at least 5) with a 60 second break between sets. While it was a pretty easy workout overall, my lower back is a bit fried right now from all of the rowing. Thus, as with the initial test, I could really feel it in my abs worked to hold my body straight.

I’m assuming that the back thing will work itself out over time, especially because we’ll be traveling next week and I probably won’t be able to row while we’re away.