5,001 Push-ups in 1-Month Made Me Weaker
First, why?
Simple! Men sometimes do stupid things to prove stupid points.
Ok ok. The real reason?
A colleague of mine posted how he did 5,000 pullups in one month, and my jealousy got the best of me (yes, it wasn’t my finest moment).
My internal monologue went something like this:
“Damn. Tyrone absolutely crushed it. Now, what can I do to prove I’m in decent shape? I know! I’ve always wanted to do 100 push-ups in a row. Maybe if I do 5,000 in a month, I’ll be much stronger and closer to that goal.”
Before we go any further, I want to share a snippet from a famous article by Dan Sivers: Relax for the Same Result.
Like me, Dan used the Boston Esplanade as a cycle track to prove how fast he could go. One day, he biked it slowly... only to make the shocking discovery.
“So apparently all of that exhausting, red-faced, full-on push-push-push I had been doing had given me only a 4 percent boost. I could just take it easy and get 96 percent of the results.”
This is a key insight when it comes to physical exercise: the amount of perceived effort doesn’t linearly translate to achieved output.
In fact, sometimes it can lead to the exact opposite outcome.
Before trying to do 5,000 pushups in a month, I was consistently able to do 40-45 pushups in a row (my all-time best at 51). I tricked my brain into thinking... if I do 5,000/month, I should be able to at least get to 70 or 80! I’ll be soooo close to my goal!
Spoiler alert. It didn’t work.
In fact, I got WORSE.
After celebrating my accomplishment, I took 3 days off for the muscle soreness and tightness. Then I made my first attempt to achieve a new pushup PR.
Andnnd failed.
36 pushups before my arms quit.
How is this even possible? Well, before you say I should know better, I will say I absolutely did. Decades of workout wisdom will tell you that strength training requires recovery periods for muscles to rebuild (and that’s where a lot of the strength gains happen).
Here’s The Real Problem
I sometimes live in that smart-enough-to-be-dangerous part of the IQ bell curve. You know the type? The person who thinks they can outwit the rules of nature just because they are good at math and science.
Well, now I know for a fact that nature didn’t make me the exception to the rule. That, in fact, sometimes (as Derek so beautifully described), we can just relax and get the same damn result (maybe even better).
This doesn’t mean don’t push yourself! The reason HIIT and anaerobic strength training work is that you push your muscles to the point of failure, then let them repair. However, that last part is the key. You have to go into it with the right plan, or you’ll undermine your results.
As a guy, I can’t promise I won’t do other stupid things to prove I’m fast or strong, but hopefully this lesson has sunk in for good.