My name is Allie and for 30 days I did 100 push-ups a day because clearly, I hate myself but I love fitness challenges and have always wanted to do one; plus I have no arm strength whatsoever. So the best way to build that up and hopefully fulfill my lifelong dream of doing a pull up is by doing this Buzzfeed inspired fitness challenge.
I started my journey of hopefully getting some muscles in my arms on November 27, 2017. I started out by taking some before pictures of myself as ‘before’ shots of what my arms looked like for reference. I’m aware that they’re not that impressive.
After having my roommate take these very awkward pictures of me, it was time to get to work. On my first day, I did 5 sets of 20 push-ups each with a minute break in-between. The first three sets felt pretty good but knowing that I had two more to go killed me inside and afterwards, my muscles hurt so bad that they were shaking for a solid 45 minutes after I completed my pushups. Already I knew that the next 30 days were going to be rough. Nevertheless, I persisted.
Week 1 overall was filled with sore muscles. After day one, I changed my sets from 5 sets of 20 to 10 sets of 10 and the change was amazing, because I’m not used to doing this much exercise with my arms they killed and my arms were more or less sore for every hour of the entire week. Though after day 5, my attitude started to change. The push-ups were starting to feel less like a chore and more like just a part of my daily life. Day 6 came with a slight hiccup; December 2, otherwise known as the Crosstown Shootout, the biggest rivalry game of Xavier men’s basketball against the University of Cincinnati. Since I camped outside to get a good spot the night before I was unable to do my push-ups until 4 o’clock that day and was tired that doing the last fifty almost killed me. However, overall I thought that week one was a success to my plans of getting arm strength even though I saw no muscles appearing whatsoever.
Week 2 went smoothly with no issues whatsoever. I stopped feeling like I wanted to die after every set which I took as a plus. I could also start to see some muscle mass in my arms which was kind of exciting.
Week 3 was finals week and I’m not going to lie, there was something calming about doing push-ups repeatedly as a way to take a break from the pressures of finals. The one day that was kind of terrible that week, was the day I left to go home because I live in New Jersey which is about 10 hours from Cincinnati by car, so I had to do all my push-ups before we left which was a little stressful.
Week 4, my last week was a challenge in the sense that I was home and on break and felt no motivation whatsoever to do anything, let alone a hundred push-ups a day. But I ended up doing them. Also, Christmas happened which was challenging just trying to find the time to do them all that day. My last day, December 27th, I decided to try a do all 100 in one go which I had never attempted. I got to about 40 and my arms couldn’t take it anymore but I did do them all within like 5-10 minutes of one another. After the 100th push-up I collapsed to the floor because I was done!
What I learned from this is that I did 3,000 push-ups over the course of a month. It sucked a lot less than I thought it was going too for doing that many push-ups. I definitely gained muscles in my arms which was probably the only good thing about it. I honestly would probably do it again because after a while it just became such a calming thing that I did every day, that I barely even realized I was doing so much exercise. I would recommend this challenge to anyone who wants to push themselves to exercise their arms, especially if you skip arm day a lot like I do. Most importantly, I’m proud of myself for not skipping a day or cheating at all with my number or what I considered a push-up. Now I feel like I’m on my way to becoming the superhero I was always meant to be.
Before Shots
After Shots