My Sons and I Are Doing a Push Up Challenge

 I'll tell you about the push up challenge in a minute, but first holiday eating...

It wasn't pretty. Okay, the food was great. And I didn't go hog wild, really. But somehow I picked up about seven pounds in the month of December. 

Back on the straight and narrow. Already lost three of it. 

Now the push ups. I had an idea to do a push up challenge with my boys for a month. Six of us began the challenge.

One dropped out the first day. It's not because it's too hard for him. He's already crazy fit. He builds pools for a living and much of that is him on the business end of a shovel. 

Another one did it only once or twice. He too works a full day in construction. 

The boys who still live at home all are doing it with me. We are just over half way through. 

The challenge is this: Do 50 pushups a day for a month. Take Sundays off. 

The eighteen year old, who practices karate and ballet, immediately decided to take on more than 50 each day. 

The other two are hanging in there with at least 50. 

We all have the option of logging our efforts on a spreadsheet.

Here's what's happened with me. The first week, I struggled to get 50 in each day. And for me, I do elevated push ups. So far my joints aren't letting me do many pushups from the floor. 

By the end of week one, I was stronger. 50 a day seemed too little for me. So I upped it to 60 or more. 

By the end of week two, I was ready for more, 100 push ups a day. 

That is a challenge for me, but I am doing it without overly stressing my joints. 

The way I do it is with modified push up pyramids.

Start out with two push ups. Then, the next set is four, and the next six push ups and so on. 

There may be other reasons for this, but one is that it warms up your muscles and joints. 

I figured this out: if I pyramid up to ten push ups and back down to two, in sets that look like this - 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, that's 50 push ups. 

If I pyramid up to 14 (which I can do now), that equals 98 push ups.

Our rule with this challenge is this: get in 50 push ups a day however you want. Any kind of push ups, in any way you can get them in. Do them all at once if you can, or spread them out through the day.

This 58 year old man feels great doing this. Maybe it's a way for you to work on your fitness too. 

By the way, I always suggest getting advice from a medical or fitness professional before starting something like this. No one wants to get hurt when they are trying to get healthier.

The Lazy Art of Weight Loss