Push Up Challenge.
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.
