At this point, 30 pushups seems like nothing. But seriously, week 5 of the 100 pushup program is definitely not a walk in the park. About halfway through week 3, I dropped my pushups down to my knees. Part of me feels like that's cheating. But on the other hand, my wrists were taking a serious beating doing 100 pushups (over 5 sets) on my toes. Plus, given that both my mother and grandmother have carpal tunnel syndrome, I listen to my wrist pain.So no toe pushups for me (at least, not for high reps).
Plus, doing them on my toes means that I only come down about halfway, three quarters if I'm being really good. When I dropped to my knees, I could then bring my chest all the way down to brush the floor, and it felt as if I were isolating the chest muscles better.
All that to say that I'm doing pushups on my knees and getting a better workout for it.
I did my week 4 completion test on Sunday, and I made sure not to not look at the minimum to get the top rung (because if I did, I knew, just knew, that I would only do the minimum and tell myself that was enough). I managed to pound out 50 (50!), and it didn't really start to get hard until about 35-40 (40 ended up being the minimum).
Monday I was teaching boot camp, and our cardio exercise was jumping jacks. And I was psyched to notice that I actually have shoulder dimples now when I'm doing jacks! My body type is the kind that doesn't gain muscle definition easily, so I'm always super excited when I have the least little line that shows up. If I end up not finishing the pushup program, then I'll still be happy for this little development, even if it goes away once I stop doing so many pushups.
But then came the start of week 5 on Tuesday. Week 5 and 6 look completely insane. I'm not kidding. I didn't have too much trouble with the last day of week 4, even though I did too many since I couldn't remember the numbers (I did 30,24,24,20,30). But once I get past 30 and start nearing 40, that's when the muscles in my chest start to burn badly. Which is the point, I suppose. Here's what weeks 5 and 6 look like:
Week 5
Day 1: (60 sec rest in between) 40/32/30/25/40(or as many as possible/AMAP)
Day 2: (45 sec) 20/20/18/18/15/15/14/AMAP 40
Day 3: (30 sec) 18/18/16/16/14/14/12/AMAP 40
Week 6
Day 1: (60 sec) 56/45/42/40/AMAP 56
Day 2: (45 sec) 30/30/25/25/25/25/22/AMAP 56
Day 3: (30 sec) 27/27/23/23/23/23/20/AMAP 56
Given that my max on Sunday was 50, doing 40, then another 32 with just a minute in between seems nigh on impossible. I made it through about 25 of the second set. I think I may take another couple days off of pushups, maybe do some chest flies instead, and repeat week 4 again.
Posts
