Melissa Maples » Pushups Update

Pushups Update

Filed under: Personal • Self-Hacking 19 September 2008, 17:42

Real progress: I moved up to Week Two this week, and… drum roll… I’m doing real, live boy pushups, finally. In fact, I did 21 of them today. The gain in strength seems to be accelerating. Very pleased with that.

I’m still having one problem that I’ve been experiencing since the beginning, though— when I do pushups, I do them very slowly because if I speed up, it feels like my collarbone is going to snap in two. I read something online that said this is not unheard of, and tucking the chin into the chest can help because it rounds out the top of the spine and takes some pressure off the collarbone. Indeed tucking my chin does help a lot, but now that I’m doing more pushups (and harder ones), the problem still creeps back in after the 10th or 12th pushup. I’m told it won’t ever completely go away, but that I shouldn’t be afraid because despite what it feels like, my collarbone won’t break. The internet wouldn’t lie to me, so I’m just going to believe what I’ve read. I’m the freak who has too much calcium in her diet and has never had a single broken bone or any dental work whatsoever, so I think I’m pretty strong in that department.

As always, I’m curious about your own 100 pushups saga, so please do chime in!

Click here to start reading the Hundred Pushups saga from the beginning.

http://flickr.com/photos/opacity Anne

I moved onto Week 2 without testing myself with real boy pushups. I’m still using my knees.

At the same time, I’m now doing 20 when I could barely manage 6 before, so I’m pretty happy with my progress.

I really should go back and re-test while trying to do the “real” pushup form.
http://flickr.com/photos/opacity Anne

I moved onto Week 2 without testing myself with real boy pushups. I’m still using my knees.

At the same time, I’m now doing 20 when I could barely manage 6 before, so I’m pretty happy with my progress.

I really should go back and re-test while trying to do the “real” pushup form.
http://melissamaples.com/ Melissa

@Anne I just kept doing week 1 over and over again until I could do a boy pushup. It did get old after a while, but I’m glad I was patient. I’m getting ready to do my week 3 pre-test right now, so we’ll see how that goes.
http://melissamaples.com/ Melissa

@Anne I just kept doing week 1 over and over again until I could do a boy pushup. It did get old after a while, but I’m glad I was patient. I’m getting ready to do my week 3 pre-test right now, so we’ll see how that goes.
http://flickr.com/photos/opacity Anne

Hmm. May have to go back and do that. Especially since I skipped two days now due to helping a friend move. After that, everything hurt, and I didn’t want to do any further damage.

Ugh. Do-over time!
http://flickr.com/photos/opacity Anne

Hmm. May have to go back and do that. Especially since I skipped two days now due to helping a friend move. After that, everything hurt, and I didn’t want to do any further damage.

Ugh. Do-over time!
http://www.alostrealist.com/ Tank

I just finished Day 1 of Week 4, and I’m starting to notice I have a lot more strength than what I ever had before. I also finally have some muscle tone on the right shoulder/collarbone area! I had a nasty soccer injury about 5 years ago where I bruised my spinal cord and severed some nerves in my neck. Those nerves happen to innervate my right shoulder/collarbone area, and as a result I lost a lot of muscle tone there which I thought I’d never get back. I still have problems getting it to move like my left collarbone area, but that will come with time. At any rate, this is looking up for me!

Glad to see that you two are both continuing your training; since this hasn’t killed you (yet ) it’s only going to make you stronger! By the way, are you two tracking this outside of the blog? I happened to notice on the hundred pushups site there is a place to record your max out test and daily training. It’s run by the same people who run the hundred pushups site. Take a look at the link below – I’ve added my own alias (dark_15) to this as well.

Logger Website – http://www.pushupslogger.com/

My profile – http://www.pushupslogger.com/plog/show_user?user_id=486

Keep up the good work!
http://www.alostrealist.com Tank

I just finished Day 1 of Week 4, and I’m starting to notice I have a lot more strength than what I ever had before. I also finally have some muscle tone on the right shoulder/collarbone area! I had a nasty soccer injury about 5 years ago where I bruised my spinal cord and severed some nerves in my neck. Those nerves happen to innervate my right shoulder/collarbone area, and as a result I lost a lot of muscle tone there which I thought I’d never get back. I still have problems getting it to move like my left collarbone area, but that will come with time. At any rate, this is looking up for me!

Glad to see that you two are both continuing your training; since this hasn’t killed you (yet ) it’s only going to make you stronger! By the way, are you two tracking this outside of the blog? I happened to notice on the hundred pushups site there is a place to record your max out test and daily training. It’s run by the same people who run the hundred pushups site. Take a look at the link below – I’ve added my own alias (dark_15) to this as well.

Logger Website – http://www.pushupslogger.com/

My profile – http://www.pushupslogger.com/plog/show_user?user_id=486

Keep up the good work!
http://melissamaples.com/ Melissa

@Tank wow, I didn’t know about the logger – thanks for that.

Glad to hear about your recovery… this is hard enough with a body that works perfectly; I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to overcome an injury like that. Fantastic story!
http://melissamaples.com/ Melissa

@Tank wow, I didn’t know about the logger – thanks for that.

Glad to hear about your recovery… this is hard enough with a body that works perfectly; I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to overcome an injury like that. Fantastic story!
http://geoffgolder.com/ geoff

you stopped updating! did you get to 100?

http://melissamaples.com/ Melissa

Ah, that’s because I moved the updates over to my fitness thingy!

The short answer is no, I never got to 100 in one go. I can pretty consistently do 30 every time I attempt it (i.e. 4 days a week, which is how often I do strength work), and in an all-out exhaustion test my record was 37 (38 if you count the one where I collapsed). Try as I might, I just don’t seem to be able to break through the 40 barrier. I’ll tell you what, though – my arms look and feel great. Maybe that’s the thing with this project – they promise you something crazy they know most people won’t be able to do, just to get you interested, but in the end you’re so happy with your progress, you don’t care that you didn’t get to the original goal. That’s my theory, anyway.

http://geoffgolder.com geoff

you stopped updating! did you get to 100?

http://melissamaples.com/ Melissa

Ah, that’s because I moved the updates over to my fitness thingy!

The short answer is no, I never got to 100 in one go. I can pretty consistently do 30 every time I attempt it (i.e. 4 days a week, which is how often I do strength work), and in an all-out exhaustion test my record was 37 (38 if you count the one where I collapsed). Try as I might, I just don’t seem to be able to break through the 40 barrier. I’ll tell you what, though – my arms look and feel great. Maybe that’s the thing with this project – they promise you something crazy they know most people won’t be able to do, just to get you interested, but in the end you’re so happy with your progress, you don’t care that you didn’t get to the original goal. That’s my theory, anyway.

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