Perception

What do you see when you look at the picture above? To me, it looks like a falling fox, ears streaming back from the speed of the fall. Our cabin is made of wood and there are lots of knots and swirls in which I can easily imagine that I see many things.

I now realize that I have been doing something similar in my push-up routine. I have been working toward 100 push-ups for more than a year and in the last week I got to where I did 98 in my first set. Almost there! I rested four days and set up our camera so that I could record myself as I made my first serious attempt at the big goal. I wasn't too surprised to fall a bit short with only 95, but I was surprised when I watched the play-back of the short video. I knew I wasn't doing perfect form push-ups, but I hadn't realized they were that bad. Over the months I had perfected a method of doing push-ups that required very little movement at all-- arms spread too widely, vertical movement too minimal. So I had been deceiving myself, believing what I wanted to believe.

Here is another example-- but not such a disturbing one:
That's a shot of my bicycle odometer taken early this spring. The bottom line shows the total miles, and when I look at it, I like to think it reads 99,999 miles. In fact, it is only 9,999.9 miles. Still, that's a real milestone--the first time I had ever "rolled-over" the odometer on any bicycle. (I've ridden a lot more miles than that, but usually the battery gives out on the odometer and it gets reset before rolling over.) Equally deceptive is the second line of the odometer which supposedly shows my maximum speed on the bike--70.8 mph. I've no idea how that reading showed up, but it is about 30 mph faster than I have ever gone on the bike!

Anyway, my reality check about push-ups means that I'll go back to a more balanced and less obsessive upper-body workout. I may never get to 100 push-ups, but I will get stronger.

Pushing On

A picture says 1,000 words. Here are three pictures about my progress in the "100 Push-ups" challenge.

The top graph shows the total for my five sets of push-ups on the y-axis and the date on the x-axis. The graph shows my progress from early December through early August. The slope for the total is clearly increasing over time, but the slope for the all-important first set up push-ups almost looks flat.

I've broken the first set out in the third graph. It, too, shows a gradual slope upward, though it is less clear that progress is continuing--and can continue--to be made. I hit 50 first-set push-ups in early December. By early January I was at 60. I didn't hit 70 until mid-March and 80 in mid-June. Since then progress has been slow. . . . I think I can get to 90 on a good day, but 100? I just don't know.

Less Is More!

About a year ago, during one of my rambles around the web, I came across a site about how to build up to doing one hundred consecutive push-ups (www.100pushups.info). Sue and I got started, and after a few months I had set an informal goal of trying to manage 60 consecutive pushups by my 60th birthday. I fell a bit short of that goal and was growing vexed by my lack of real progress as I followed the program religiously.

Then I discovered the true secret of growing stronger (at least for aging men): LESS IS MORE! . . . Yippee! There is almost nothing I hate more than doing pushups, and the discovery that I could actually improve by doing less has been a delightful and liberating revelation.

The initial program calls for an every-other-day routine of five sets of pushups with about 60 seconds of rest between sets. I got bogged down at about "Week 7" and couldn't make any more progress until I made two changes: (1) Instead of doing pushups every-other day, I now do them every third or (more often) fourth day. A blissful reprieve. And (2) instead of taking 60 seconds rest between sets, I take as much time as I want--something like three to five minutes, but I don't time it.

To illustrate how successfully less can be more, here is a record of my routine for the past month:

3/10 64/50/48/50/50 -- 262 total
3/14 64/58/50/52/45 -- 269 total
3/18 66/68/54/50/46 -- 289 total
3/23 68/64/54/50/48 -- 289 total
3/29 75/62/54/58/54 -- 303 total
4/3 30/30/30 -- 90 total
4/5 75/60/56/55/44 -- 290 total
4/9 72/70/60/56/50 -- 308 total

Mind you, I don't by any means try to do "perfect form" pushups. I hate 'em. I do 'em fast and dirty. I want to get them finished and go have a beer. I'm no body-builder and never will be, but pushups do provide a quick total-body work-out that can help one avoid the injuries that are otherwise endemic among aging baby boomers.