Renagerie

I started two new fitness programs this week:

one hundred push ups

This is a six week program culminating in the ability to do one hundred consecutive push ups. I did the initial test on Sunday morning and was only able to do 29 push ups. I say only because I’ve actually done morning push ups intermittently through the years and I honestly expected to do more than 30.

The web site recommends starting on week three of the program if you did more than 20 push ups in your initial test, so I did (using the iPhone app of the same name as an aide). Day one of week three was too hard and I couldn’t quite complete it. I’ve decided to back off to week two and pick up on day two of week two tomorrow, after a day off today as recommended.

By the way, my “failure” for week three, day one was still 66 push ups, though not consecutive. They were broken into five sets (14, 18, 14, 14 and 6 (of 20)) with 60 seconds of rest between each set. In addition to only completing six of the last set of 20, I would say that my last few from the fourth set were probably not good form push ups.

two hundred sit-ups

This is basically the same thing as the push ups, but with a target of two hundred consecutive sit-ups. I did the initial test for these on Monday, the rest day for my push ups. These are explicitly not full sit-ups; rather, they are curl-ups. A curl-up is a form of crunch where you start in a normal sit-up starting position and then simply curl your shoulders and upper back off the ground and hold for a second or two. Your lower back stays on the ground. This is good because full sit-ups rub one of the vertebrae in my lower back, forcing me to do them on a very soft surface.

For my initial test I was able to execute 98 of these sit-ups, though I expect the ones toward the end were probably not high enough. I forced myself to push number 98 a bit higher, resulting in 99 being a non-starter. 98 is a great number, but it’s hard to be excited about being so close to 100 and not being able to do just two more sit-ups.

As with the push ups, the recommendation based on my initial test was to start with week three, but given my experience with week three of the push ups, I decided to start with week two. Of course, I exceeded the threshold by much more with the sit-ups than the push ups, so perhaps week three would have been acceptable. But it’s nice to have these two programs run in sync with each other, albeit on alternating days.

Day one was today and I had no difficulty completing the regimen, which consisted of 94 sit-ups across five sets (21, 21, 15, 15 and 22). Checking the web site I just noticed that the fifth set is really supposed to be at least 22, but really as many as you can do. Oops. The iPhone app should really make that more clear. (Yes, the iPhone app for this is a separate app from the hundred push up app, and their each $1.99.)

Wouldn’t you like to join me in this project?