A 30-Day Push

It seems I can’t turn around these days without hearing about some sort of fitness or diet challenge. 90 days, 30 days, planks, squats, shake-drinking, clean-eating, detoxing, boxing… While I am not a fan of quick-fixes or fads, short-term goals like these can help provide focus that translates into long-term habits (I think my next challenge needs to be going for a whole paragraph without using a hyphen!). Still, none of these challenges piqued my interest.

I had seen seen the site http://www.hundredpushups.com before, but I think I would be as challenged mentally as physically to complete it. Honestly, my mind tends to get bored with the exercise before my body gives out. Then I found this push-up challenge. You build to 50 push-ups, but five different variations are involved. That should help with the mental aspect. Plus, the variations are more challenging that the straight-up variety.

I did the first day today, which consisted of one rep of each kind. It went easily except for the diamond push-up; I barely completed the single rep. I will probably need to do kneesies on that one as the challenge progresses. I also conducted a baseline test to see how many straight push-ups I could do before failure (29). It will be interesting to see what that number is at the end of the month. Hello, September. I am prepared to PUSH myself.

Will all of these push-ups make me into a Mean Girl?

As an aside, my friends at http://weshallhavepie.com/ have started their own September Skinny Jeans Challenge. Hop on over to their site if you’d like some ideas on healthy eating (A hyphen-free paragraph! Oh, wait… Crud.).

Do you have any September goals?

18 thoughts on “A 30-Day Push

  1. Hope you can stick it out till day 30! I was doing the squat challenge building up to 250 squats in 30 days. It got boring after I hit 150. While most people were complaining I felt fine doing them so it wasnt a challenge per say. Keep us posted on how you are doing with the challenge. Goodluck

    • I teach Body Pump and we normally do 90 – 100 squats in the squat track with barbells, so I’m pretty sure it would have been more of a mental than physical challenge for me as well 🙂

      I did my day 2 set today. Thanks for the interest!

  2. First of all- love the mean girls picture.. my favorite movie! I also can’t stand the quick fixes, now that I am fit and healthy I feel like people are always trying to sell me whatever fad they are into at the moment. But I also agree that short term goals are what lead to long term goals. My plans for the fall are to work on my distance running 🙂

    • Ha 🙂 Just don’t start downing Kalteen bars…

      I love your attitude. Lifestyle, baby! Sure, there are vacations and special occasions, but you’ve got to make the healthy choices day in and day out most of the time for lasting results and improvements.

      Are you goals more about going longer or faster?

      • I just like to cover all my food in butter (Since it’s not a carb, obviously). 😛

        Whenever people ask me how I lost the weight they are shocked that it was boring old watching what I eat and working out- no magic pill? no 30 day shred DVD? I’m boring I know 😉

        I’d like to say longer AND faster- but I know I can’t really work on both at the same time. So distance for now… and then speed.

      • I have a friend at work who lost over a hundred pounds. People ask him the same questions, he responds like you, and they react like your friends.

        I go through phases in my training. Sometimes I work on speed, sometimes I train for those long races. Changing it up keeps things interesting 🙂

  3. Pingback: Push-up Challenge Recap | Bigger than smaller

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