9/8/23, 9:00 PM I tried to do 100 pushups every day for a month and completely failed | by Gian Carrera | Medium

I tried to do 100 pushups every day for a month

and completely failed
Gian Carrera · Follow
5 min read · Mar 5, 2019

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One month ago, while half-drunk looking out at the beach I had the best Idea ever,
copy Buzzfeed by doing 100 pushups a day every day for a month. Surely it can’t be that
hard right? I mean if you do 10 an hour for 10 hours that’s no issue, right? Well not
exactly, what I thought to be trivial ended up being a bit of a nightmare logistically and
physically demanding and possibly damaging to my body (I’m sure its fine don’t
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9/8/23, 9:00 PM I tried to do 100 pushups every day for a month and completely failed | by Gian Carrera | Medium

worry). However, I learnt a ton of invaluable lessons about my limits and what training
I respond well too. But you just want to hear about how I ate shit right?

First up I completely ruined my neck, I thought I would be slick by doing alternate

pushups, including seal pushups, wide grip and diamond grip. What I thought would
give me fantastic muscles also put excess amounts of strain on my neck muscles and
now they have been sore for a month. Partially because I haven’t given them a proper
chance to recover and partially because I am not varying my exercises. By not doing a
variety of exercises the compensatory muscles used in maintain posture, were not
exercised enough. Because of this, holding my posture put excess pressure on my neck
muscles. Because of all this pressure on my neck muscles they began to hurt, a lot. The
pain got so bad that I couldn’t sleep for 2 nights. Fortunately, I work with
physiotherapists, who treated me with lasers and told me to just take it easy. The after
effects are still present and it will probably take me a month to get everything back in
sync (perfect timing to prepare for another dumb challenge).

“Through sickness and in health” — a fantastic commitment you should make to your
partner not to your gym.

Second mistake, trying to push my limits when I should have just rested. While when I
was too sore to train one day, I decided to try compensating by doubling my training
the following day by doing 100 Alt pushups and 100 standard grip pushups totalling
200. By pushing my recovering muscles to take double the load they usually do I
massively overworked them and put myself off training for longer. I then proceeded to
do this again when I was getting the cold and decided to try push my weakened body
when it should have just been resting. However, by pushing my limits I also got a much
better idea of where they are and what happens when you aggravate them. So, in
future I will be able to train closer to them confidently.

Third mistake, choosing when to train. This one hit me in many ways, particularly in
my social life and sleep patterns. I remembered to do the challenge every day, however
usually I remembered late in the day right before bed. Most days this was okay but
sometimes I had dinners with friends and places to be at night so guess what I just did
the pushups while out and about. There were numerous times where I just excused
myself from hangs at friends houses to go to another room and just start doing
pushups. However, if we were good friends I would just say “excuse me while I be
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9/8/23, 9:00 PM I tried to do 100 pushups every day for a month and completely failed | by Gian Carrera | Medium

weird for a minute” followed by doing pushups on the lounge-room floor in front of
them. Both they and I thought I was a dickhead. Fortunately, my friends weren’t the
only ones who got to laugh at me, Public places I did pushups include:

· In a parking lot

· In the school library

· Next to the lake

To get them done when you need to do them really just involved putting aside the
worry of looking like a dick and just doing it. The interruptions to my life also affected
my sleep. Because I remembered to do them late in the day, I would rush to get them
all done at around 10pm, which is an hour before bed. While some people would be
perfectly fine with exercise before bed, I am not one of them. If I want to sleep at night
I need to time when I exercise to be able to sleep well at night.

But it wasn’t all bad news in fact I leant a lot, particularly about how much my body
CAN tolerate. One of the realizations I had after about day 7 was that every day feels
like “the hardest day yet” which pretty much means that all days are no more difficult
than the next. This is helpful for after a long day when the world looks bleak and you
feel tired. It doesn’t matter how tired you feel if you just do it you will feel better for it,
you also learn that it won’t be easier tomorrow, if anything it will be harder if you miss
today.

I also learnt that consistency trumps quality. I have done some crazy workouts with
friends, we usually go to the point where we can’t lift our arms and vomiting is just
kind of expected. These take a week to recover from. You also get what some runners
call “post-race depression” where after serious physical achievement and a massive
rush of endorphins the day before you feel really low. While defiantly not the same
experience marathon runners have, it is still real and experienced. This majorly shoots
your motivation and makes it hard to get back to the gym the next day/week. By
consistently doing a smallish workout every day I got MUCH better results than a few
large ones a week.

Overall, I failed the challenge, I only got about 2500 of the 3000 pushups I was hoping
for. However, I gained a lot of experience. If you are thinking about doing this, I would
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9/8/23, 9:00 PM I tried to do 100 pushups every day for a month and completely failed | by Gian Carrera | Medium

highly recommend not doing this. The cost on your body is really just, not worth it.
Small full body workouts including more work on trunk, legs and back would get much
better total results and will probably not destroy your neck. I’ll be doing some more
interesting fitness challenges, so I’ll keep you updated when I find something cool!

Fitness Health Push Up Challenge Mistakes

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