I decided to take up a twitter challenge from someone today and do 100 push-ups. Not sure if I'm supposed to keep doing it every day but let's talk about today first before we get to tomorrow.
I've been working out every day now for 2 years. I used to be a competitive swimmer. I once challenged myself, and succeeded, to do 1000 pushups a day for three months. The mirror, to my squinting jaundiced eye, still says "fit." ahem...
So, 100 push-ups, no problem, right? Well, to ask the question is to answer answer it. First, the issue is not so much muscle strength as such. I mean I started with 10 reps but finished with a strong fast "30" from 71-100 and probably could still have done 50 sequentially if real money were on the line. The whole thing from 0 to 100 took like 20 minutes at the most. The problem, however, was with the first 10. And here I know that everyone over 60 is going to absolutely get this and everyone who is 25 or 30 is going to say "pfffft, old men suck."
The problem with the first 10 was the not so much the pec or tricep strength, which I would have expected. It was the other stuff. It was the shoulders, front (front delt and clavicular head) and rotator cuff (both current semi-injuries or at least inflamed or something); it was my elbow tendons; it was some weird injured-bicep pain, though that really shouldn't have come into play here; and it was also my back (sorta broke it 15 years ago). Even my left wrist was bitching: so, "shut up wrist, this is not your fight."
That really f'n hurt. It also felt like the distance between young-me and me, and the distance between idealized-mirror-me-now and real-old-man-me-now, seemed to be far. So: hurt. Pride and body.
But I think I might do it again tomorrow. Maybe even 200. After some Advil.
Hi, Will. I used to do p/u's, including variations on planks. I had the same "ouch" experiences as you. I found the injuries I experienced from them quickly became chronic, interfering with my ability to do the rest of my w/o. So, I just abandoned them. I figured it made more sense to give up one exercise than to be unable to do a dozen others. Some exercises just seem to be too much for the aging body.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm sure you're aware of this, but be careful of with the Advil. Acquaintance of mine ended up at the doc with a bleeding ulcer subsequent to regular use of Advil (usually on an empty stomach, which was not at all smart).
Francis