Growing up, push-ups were hard for me. It probably wasn’t until almost high school for me to make one good solid push-up. Eventually I read about the benefits of doing 100 push-ups a day. Around mid 2000’s, I came across this website and thought the training progression was amazing: https://hundredpushups.com
The basic premise is to take you to 100 push-ups in 6 weeks, working out 3 times a week. Now, it took me many, many, many, many more weeks to get to 100. But every week I could see progression as long as I pushed myself. I haven’t thought push-ups for a long time, until recently a good friend Luis mentioned he’s trying to get back into shape. And his goal was 100 push-ups a day. It doesn’t matter how many reps and how many sets, but get to 100 a day first. Do 100 sets of 1 reps if that’s what it takes, but just get to 100 first to establish that baseline.
Recently in my personal training, I’ve been trying to maintain this baseline as well. But it does take some time. I teach 3 hours a day, and outside of that I have to find time to do 100 push-ups? So I thought, why not just make the class do it with me. I get the training I want for my maintenance, and the rest of you, push through your boundaries!
The 100 push-up challenge was born. Here are the is what’s up:
Rule #1: Do any push-up variety you want. Normal push-ups, wide push-ups, offsets, one arm push-ups, daimond push-ups, one feet on top of another push-ups, on-your-knee push-ups, legs-on-a-bench push-ups, hands-on-the-bench push-ups, GI-Joe push-ups. Any one of them. Mix them up. Do the same ones. Do different ones. Doesn’t matter. But we will be doing 100 total.
Rule #2: Timer is set at 8 minutes. When the alarm goes off in 8 minutes, we will drop everything we are working on, and do 20 push-ups. The reason for this is to spread out the 5 sets of 20 reps over a 45 minute class.
That’s it. I am doing 10 offsets on each side because I am trying to find my way back to one-arm-push-ups. But you do you.
I am very proud to say, we completed the 100 push-ups challenge!
First 20 push-ups
Push-ups 20-40
Push-ups 40-60
Push-ups 60-80
Push-ups 80-100
Pure honor system. Brandon told me he was 14 short. We can’t have that happen, so we cheered him on for the last 14! By the way, Brandon is one of the strongest kid I got…!! Great job Brandon!
All in all, I am VERY PROUD of our Dragon Gate martial arts family. I am proud of EVERY EACH AND ONE OF YOU. This is not just a physical unlock. You now KNOW you can do 100 push-ups. You can choose to do 100 push-ups a day if you want. You can’t say, “I can’t” anymore. Because you already DID. Everything onwards is by choice now. Make your push-ups better, deeper, harder.
Instead of fearing pain an soreness, make pain and soreness fear YOU! Strengthen your body, sharpen your mind, be the best version of yourself!
