newway45’s BodyBlog

If you read the next couple of posts you will see that I tried to do a push up challenge to see if I was in shape. According to Men’s Health Get Back In Shape book being able to do 40 pushups is one of the 10 standards to assessing if you are in shape. I was able to do only 30. At first I was ashamed because several things went through my head.

The first thing was that when I was 18 I moved to Oklahoma. I lived there for four years. During that time I went to visit some friends at Oklahoma University. During the time I was hanging out a song came on with an awesome drum solo. One of my friends said that to be a drummer you have to be able to do 50 push ups in 2 minutes. So I decided to try and see how I would do. I got down did 50 push ups, stood up and had to wait about 10 seconds for the first minute to be up. My friends were amazed.

The second thing I thought about was when I was in the Marine Corps. My unit was sent down to Honduras as a Peace Keeping Force. On the last day my team and I were in a fighting hole keeping guard of the main entrance and we were called in because it was time to go back home. Unfortunately one of my team members left his gas mask in the hole an no one noticed. Our Lieutenant found it and said that we all had to do 400 pushups before we could get liberty (our time off). We had as long to do them as we needed. So we all went up to get the first set done. There were four of us. The first guy stopped at 25, the second guy stopped at 30, the third guy stopped at 45, and I went all the way to 150. I surprised even myself. My arms felt so pumped I thought they were going to bust out of my rolled up sleeves. I went back a couple more times over the next 2 hours and finished my 400 before even getting on the plane. My second and third sets were 75 each and then I did two sets of 50 to finish up.

Now here I was having 30 giving me a hard time. Then I thought back then I was in my late teens and early twentys. Now I am 46. I haven’t been doing steady working out like I used too. Now I know where I am at and I can fix it. So now I am thinking about it more positively. The other thing is that I know there are a lot of 46 year olds and some much younger who can’t do 30 push ups. So I think I am doing pretty good. And it will only get better from here.

On Saturday I woke up early to get in a workout. I read in Men’s Health Get Back in Shape book that there are 10 standards of being in shape. I know not everyone here reads Men’s Health but it is one of the publications I read. I am working on seeing how I do in each of the 10 categories. So on Saturday I set out to see how I would do on Standards 2 and 6. Run 1.5 miles within 10 minutes and do 40 pushups. My results were 1.5 miles in 18 minutes and 30 pushups. I actually did a 1.7 mile jog/walk but only timed the 1.5 mile mark. I did 30 push ups and 20 crunches, 20 reverse crunches, 20 each of left and right side crunches. So that was on Saturday June 26th. On Sunday June 27th I did 30 minutes of swimming. Today, Tuesday June 30th I did a 1.7 (untimed) jog/walk and 4 sets of the following circuit. 10 push ups with the Perfect Pushup, 15 crunches, 15 reverse crunches, 15 left side crunches, and 15 right side crunches. Except on the second circuit I was counting and thinking while doing my left side crunches when I realized I was at 20 all ready. so I did 20 on the right and finished the other circuits at the 15. I did all this before work because I didn’t have to be in until 10:00 today. So far I am off to a good start to my new 2-3 times a week exercise goal. On Sunday I will update how I did for the week. Thank you to anyone who is keeping up with my progress.

OK I am a little ashamed to say that I did not do too much during this period. I did a few more workouts like the previous period. I also did a couple workouts on tv. We have the exercise channel and I did some Jillian (from Biggest loser) workouts. They were pretty good workouts. I am happy about what I did because compared to last year I did a lot. However, I did go down to 219 and 44 inches. I am now 225 and 45.5 again. What I have realized is that I am setting big goals which are not only a good idea but they are also essential to making lasting changes. What I have noticed is that as soon as I mess up once I feel like I blew the whole thing and slack off. So for right now I am going to set the goal to exercising 2-3 times a week for the next month. Right now I am not setting any loss goals or amount of exercise goals. Just that I do something 2-3 times a week. We will see what happens after a month and step it up to the next level.