Feel like taking on a fitness challenge while you’re stuck in quarantine? How about one that can be done literally anywhere, like doing pushups every day? Dan Witmer of YouTube’s Jump Rope Dudes set himself the task of completing 100 pushup reps every single day for 30 days; here’s what he learned by the end of his month-long experiment.
“If you’re a beginner and you want to start losing weight, doing pushups, or doing something every single day, that is awesome. Just taking action is a great way to get going, and pushups are not super super intense, so it’s a great way to get your body acclimated to physical exercise as opposed to jumping on a bench press.”
“The first thing I noticed about myself was my resistance to doing it every day,” he admits. “The first six days were really easy, then after 10 days I was like, how much longer to I have to do this… But it was interesting to push through it and get it done.”
Embarking on a challenge where you do the same exercise daily helps to build good habits, and it is that consistency which Witmer cites as a major plus: “If you have a weight loss or muscle building goal, being consistent is how you get there.”
Not that you should expect to come out the other side of the 30 days completely ripped; Witmer also points out that this kind of challenge is good for building strength and maintaining a leaner physique, rather than for actually putting on mass. “If you want to see huge additions in muscle, you do have to lift weights. If you plan on seeing huge gains, you can’t just do thousands of pushups to get that physique.”
And doing 100 pushups every single day is not exactly practical in the long term. “It’s extremely taxing on your body,” he says. “If you’re constantly working the same body parts and not giving them time to recover, they get fatigued, you can lose strength, you can get injured, and overall you’re just wasting your time, because rest and eating right are actually how the muscles recover and build back up to make you stronger.”
Additionally, doing the same move day in day out can lead to discomfort and even injury, Witmer explains. “It’s great for discipline, it’s not so great for your body; I did semi-injure myself. I think from locking my arms at the top, I started to get a swollen elbow, from doing those repetitions over and over again.” Ultimately, Witmer recommends doing pushups two or three times a week in combination with other forms of cardio and weight exercises.
Source: Read Full Article