30 Days Push Up Challenge

A few months ago, in February, I set up a 5 minutes exercise routine: as many push-ups as I can in 5 minutes, every day. I wanted to see how much I can improve if I do those 5 minutes of push-ups for a month, hence my 30 Days Push-up Challenge. The results are great, I went from 81 to 116, and at the same time I learned a thing or two about how my body responds to the same workout each day.

My goals when I started the challenge was to do more than 100. I managed to reach that goal on 8th. So I made a new goal, to reach 110 and I reached that on 20th. I’m, obviously, very happy with the results.

Another goal was to do these push-ups every single day. I couldn’t do that, due to a few factors. I realized that doing every day push-ups meant I would solicit my body more than I should. I felt some pressure on the knees and elbows. I decided to have the Sunday off and this is why I didn’t do any push-ups on 17th and 24th.

On 19th I couldn’t do it, I was tired and my husband said it’s not a good idea. I had to agree with him, taking a challenge is not only about motivation, but I think it’s about knowing when to stop too. Being safe is paramount, so I skipped that day. One day, I can’t remember when exactly (next time I should write notes when I’m taking a similar challenge), I was able to do the push-ups with 10 minutes to spare in the day. In the morning I did 20 minutes of yoga, so the day wasn’t completely wasted.
On 28th I had a cold and quite high temperature, I took an aspirin and a paracetamol in the evening, another set of pills next morning and I was fine. As I avoid taking medication, over the counter pills have a fast effect on me. I think my immune system is better due to my diet and activity levels, but that is another discussion.

Another day I should mention is the 13th. When I’m doing the push-ups, I have the phone in front of me. I can look at the seconds and decide how much time I should spend on breaks. On 13th I’ve decided not to look at the phone and do how I feel. I did less, so having the timer on and looking at it is a motivation to push. Also I think I can better manage my breaks if I see how much time passed.

In the last 2 days I changed my approach and, as you can see, the results were better. At the beginning of the month, I was doing as many push-ups as I could, then a break and so on. I was starting with a series of 20-25 and I was doing less and less in the series as I was starting to get tired. In the last two days I’ve decided to try something else, because I’m like that, I can’t do every single day the same thing without coming up with lots of ideas. I did short series, of 10, with 10-15 seconds breaks between them. This meant I was able to do more push-ups and that was surprising for me.

The 30 Days Push Up Challenge is over and I can say I enjoyed it a lot. I want to continue doing 5 minutes of push-ups once every week, as part of another challenge, or just to keep my push-up numbers up.

After this challenge I can say that I want to try another one, a 5 or 10 minutes challenge to exercise each day, but not the same thing, to do cardio or push-ups (I love push-ups) or yoga (instead of a day off) or squats. With this approach, of 5 minutes of intense exercise, but different, it would be ok.

These are my thoughts after a 30 Days Push Up Challenge. Do you take fitness challenges? Would you like to try a push-up challenge?