My Pushup Journey

Two months ago, while recovering from Kona, I decided to start doing push ups.  The simple reason was that I'd never really gotten into a push up habit in the past, and that it seemed like something relatively simple to do.  My push up journey has already taught me a few things and led me to a new goal.  It turns out that Pushups in One Minute is a metric used by a variety of organizations as a qualification goal or measure of fitness.  It turns out that there is actually a body of literature and information in regards to one minute pushup numbers.  There is evidence that a certain number of pushups offers evidence of protection from cardiovascular disease.  That was from a study of firefighters.  Of course, it's not clear whether training to do the requisite numbers noted in the study will confer additional protection from cardiovascular disease, or whether those numbers were demonstrative of the fitness level of the firefighters.

To be able to be in the Coast Guard, a man needs to be able to do 29 pushups in one minute.  Army ranger recruits need to perform 49 pushups in two minutes.  A navy seal needs to do 42 push ups in two minutes. The average twenty year old can do about 25 pushups, the average 60 year old man can do nine.  Where am I?  As of today, I can do 44 pushups in one minute.  I'm hoping to see if I can improve that number.  In the meantime, I've discovered that doing pushups is a great form of regular exercise.  

I've developed a routine that I now do most days.  I particularly do it as my warm up for my sprint efforts.  It includes 20 pushups, 20 air squats, 20 lunges, wall sits, planks, leg raises and back extensions.  Sometimes I'll do more than one set of these, depending on how I feel or what my plan is that day.  One thing has become clear to me, and that is the fact that pushups are a great workout.  They get my heart rate up, and they absolutely impact the entire body.  I've developed different pushup routines.  I'll tend to do my pushups in groups of 20.  I've spent an entire day doing 20 pushups every hour.  Today, I did two 1 minute all out pushup sets, doing 44 the first time and 43 the second.  In between, I did my uphill sprint workout.  In order to get the blood flowing and have positive stimulation on my body, I can just drop down and do 20 pushups.  It will be interesting to see where this pushup journey will take me in the coming months.