I've decided that because exercise is so important to a healthy life (and without exercise I certainly wouldn't be able to eat as much as I do, or have as many of those "sugar in moderation" snacks), I'm going to post now and then on various exercise topics.I teach step aerobics, weight lifting, Spinning, gliding, cardio kickboxing, and boot camp. I used to teach several weight lifting classes a week. Now, I just teach boot camp. I love boot camp, it's awesome and fun and energizing. But for the weight lifting part, I spent the entire time walking around and helping people with form. So I don't get a resistance workout of my own. I've been slacking on my own muscles.
Then I come across the 100 Pushups Program. First, they have you get down and pound out as many perfect pushups as you honestly can (by honestly, I mean no cheating by keeping your butt up in the air or only coming halfway to the floor). I do have to admit that I didn't come all the way to the floor, maybe 3/4, but I did 20. I may try again tomorrow to see how many I can do honestly coming all the way to the floor (damn that's hard on my toes, with all that blood pumping in my face and ears).
The great thing about this is that it's only three times a week. As it's not a good idea to work the same muscle group two days in a row (when you work a muscle, it makes small tears in the muscle, then the rest period allows those tears to heal and the muscle to grow). So three days a week is very manageable. For me, I think that Monday/Thursday/Saturday sounds feasible.
Here's what week 1 is going to look like for me:
Day 1 - 60 second rests between sets, sets: 10/10/8/6/as many as possible/AMAP-at least 7
Day 2 - 90 sec rest, sets: 12/12/10/10/AMAP-at least 10
Day 3 - 120 sec rest, sets: 15/13/10/10/AMAP-at least 15
Week 2:
Day 1 - 60 sec rest, sets: 12/12/9/7/AMAP-at least 10
Day 2 - 90 sec rest, sets: 16/13/11/11/AMAP-at least 15
Day 3 - 120 sec rest, sets: 15/15/12/12/AMAP-at least 15
Let's start with that. If I'm still able to move after that (or bend my wrists, because those 20 I just did definitely hit my wrists. Maybe I'll do them on my fists), then I'll see about week 3.
Does anyone want to try this with me?
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4 comments:
Don't you think you are gonna be sore, Raina, doing a 100 pushups? You might be all achy when lifting your arms overhead to slip into a dress or t-shirt.
I stopped training to failure a couple of years ago and have not regretted it. But just for fun, maybe I will take you up on it someday :)
Well sure I'll be sore! But I'm not going to be doing 100 pushups right off the bat, I'll be building up to it. I'm not viewing it as training to failure, I'm going to build up the number of pushups I'm doing. If it gets to be too painful I'll stop, but I'm going to try it out and see how many I can do!
I wonder if you misunderstood the term "training to failure" :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Training_to_failure
Ah, that sounds like what we call in aerobics "volitional fatigue."
Basically, as I go through this program, my threshold for fatigue (or failure, but I'm going to go with volitional fatigue because it sounds like a more positive term, and I'm all about positive terminology *grin*) will be higher with every day I build up the muscles. So right now I'm damn tired after my fifth rep of 10, but in a couple weeks, maybe I'll be good with 20.
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