When was the last time you did a press up? For most adults press ups are nothing more but a sweaty, grunting memory from PE lesson punishments. So you may not have done one for years. But today I’m going to try to persuade you to do 100 push ups. “100?!“, I hear you cry. Bear with me…
I’m quite fit and I do plenty of press ups. But I have never done 100 before (I’m more in the 50 press ups bracket). But today I did 100. And I’m chuffed (and sore).
Doing 100 consecutive press ups is good for your strength, fitness and posing on the beach. It’s also a tremendous confidence boost and a satisfying achievement.
But the reason I am writing about it here is because it is a terrific example of the importance of Beginning.
It’s about setting yourself an outrageous goal, having the boldness to begin and the blinkered vision to worry only about the next tiny step towards your goal.
It’s about keeping going towards your dream when you feel it is too difficult.
And it is about the sweet satisfaction of accomplishing something you did not believe you were capable of doing.
That may all be very well, but how on Earth are you going to manage to do 100 press ups?
I followed a programme from the imaginatively titled hundredpushups.com. It is a very simple website that lays out a programme that takes you from doing a mere five lots of two press ups on Day 1 through to 100 of the suckers six weeks later. Ten minutes of press ups, three times a week. That’s it!
It’s a perfect challenge to remind you to set big goals, to find the boldness to begin them and to appreciate that small, achievable steps lead eventually to levels you did not consider possible. Give it a try here.
Let me know your thoughts about this in the comments section. Free books as an incentive to the first few readers who succeed!
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5 Comments
This actually got me all excited about doing push ups. I can do about 40 now in one go, but 100 sounds killer. Thanks for the link to the hundred push ups site. I’ll give it a go.
PS – Do they call um “press ups” in the UK? I’ve never heard them called that before, but it makes sense.
I love your drive and motivation, and I know we can achieve anything we set our minds to, so kudos to you for helping set a few new minds on track!
I saw a recently saw a link to this in a cycling magazine. It has inspired me to give it a go. So far I have gone from 4 pushup to 10 and already feel the benefit. As you say, it is a great way of demostrating how you can achieve a goal by disciplining yourself to complete small steps.
Doing 100 press-ups is a good boost for up body strength definitely, but if you’re not used to it, it does make you sore and I don’t think it’s too great for your back all in one go. I can’t do 100 in one go. It’s normally 30-40 first then 20, then bursts of 10.
I need to start this again (I fell out of the loop when moving house, getting married, getting lazy).
I’ve also got a chin up bar and am going to work on that too. I saw a magazine article that claimed that every man should be able to do 10 chin ups … I used to be able to do that quick comfortably. Now however … shall we just say I’m in the single figures
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