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Push Up Up And Away

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I enjoy a good short workout.  I'm all about HIIT workouts.  Get in, get out.  You can follow @triplethedad over there if you want to see my recommendations and what I use.  Or look for the #dadfit tag.

If you followed the former version of this blog, you know I love push ups.  In fact, on at least two or three occasions, I've done the 100 push up challenge.  The idea is that if you follow the six-week program, you'll eventually be able to do 100 push ups (surprise).

Push ups are awesome and underrated both as a workout and as a health measure.  Here are some of things being said about push ups:

  • NY Times: the ultimate barometer of fitness.
  • HuffPost: If I could only do one exercise for the rest of my life, it would be the pushup.
  • LiveStrong: Of all the exercises you can do, though, pushups are one of the most effective. They are accessible, scalable to your fitness level and beneficial.

The people over at Lifehacker.com are doing push ups every day in February.

I've never really been able to get above 45, but I've never failed to drastically improve when using the program.  One of the great things is the program is scaled based on how many you can do at the start, so I don't really blame the program for my failure.  While I'd love to think I could go from doing 20 push ups to 100 in six weeks, the reality is I probably need to do it several times.

And then my wife got me an Amazon Echo for Christmas.  You might wonder how this all ties in.  Well, I'm here to tell you!  I'll be honest, I was hesitant about it first for lots of reasons.  But I've found 100 reasons to love it.  Turns out, the Echo has a 100 push up challenge app.

Bingo.

I started out doing 22 for my initial test last month.  After a couple weeks, my second test turned in 32.  I'm in week 4 Day 2 as I write this, and I performed 130 push ups over 5 sets with a approximately a minute rest between each set.  I had to take some extra rest to get there, sure, but I'm happy with that result.  Heck, the fifth set alone was 35 push ups.  You read that right: after having already done 90 or so push ups in five minutes, I did my previous max in the last set.

[UPDATE]: Since I wrote the above, I had another test day, and I'm happy to say I'm up to 40 consecutive push ups.  Figuring out just what that means as far as how good I am is somewhat hard, but generally, 40 push ups puts a male well above average, and nearing military acceptance levels.  So, yeah me!

Are you going to jump on the Lifehacker daily push up goal, or maybe take on the 100-push up challenge?  How are you getting your exercise this February?


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