My two competitors, Swagger Gus and The Soul Crusher, returned for November’s challenge. The goal was to complete the most number of pushups. In a shared spreadsheet, we recorded the number of pushups completed per day for thirty days from November 1st to November 30th.
Summary
I won the challenge by completing 3,343 pushups. That’s an average of 111 pushups per day. Sadly, the victory was not so sweet because I learned that The Crushed Soul, formerly known as The Soul Crusher, stopped competing once No Swag Gus, formerly known as Swagger Gus, gave up.
Day-to-Day Breakdown
My approach for the first three weeks was to complete pushups three times per day: in the morning, in the evening, and at night. The Crushed Soul and No Swag Gus kept increasing their pushups everyday so I had to keep up. They took days off but I didn’t. I thought I could keep up with them because of that.
By the last week I was struggling so I took a day off on November 25th. On the 24th, I was about 100 pushups behind first place. When I came back on the 26th, the difference jumped to 450. I had to step up my game. From this day on, I committed to completing 15 pushups every 30 minutes. Of course, when I was busy driving or shopping I didn’t do this. It was a good general rule to follow.
This made a huge difference. The mandatory routine enabled me to complete 1406 pushups in the last five days. That’s an average of 281 pushups per day.
Reflection
Fitness challenges are a great way to hold myself accountable. It is easy to cancel planned workouts when I don’t feel motivated. I don’t want to lose to my friends so I have to do the challenge anyway.
My back, shoulders, and neck hurt throughout the month. To counteract the pain I did exercises to ensure that I wouldn’t overload my body with only the pushup motion. Pain relief also came from drinking a lot of coffee. I ate a lot more this month too. Peanuts were my snack of choice.
Akshay Rao 