James Stewart Whyte had previously struggled with consistency and motivation in his personal fitness, and so he set himself the challenge of doing 100 pushups every single day, reasoning that he would then be able to built additional workouts into his routine once he had established the daily habit.
“Even though I like to lift weights and I love to run, I don’t do it every day,” he says in a YouTube video chronicling his progress. “I want to develop a mindset where I do a little something every day to get me closer to a larger goal, being more fit, being more healthy.”
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He started on New Year’s Day in 2019. “One of the best ways to get a new habit to stick is to lower the barriers that might give you an excuse to skip a repetition and then stop altogether,” he says. The pushups had practically no barriers, as no gym or equipment were required, and Whyte could do them anywhere, any time of day
After a month, Whyte says the workouts hadn’t necessarily become any easier, as he tended to do all 100 reps in one go, they were at least becoming a fixed habit. Once that habit became entrenched in his daily routine, he started incorporating lifting and other exercises into his workouts, breaking his 100 reps down into sets and working other muscle groups in between.
Towards the summer, Whyte began to notice some changes. “I was building muscle and becoming stronger, and the daily workouts were becoming easier” he says. “Although the results were modest, they were there.”
In addition to his daily workouts, Whyte was also maintaining a consistent high-protein, low-sugar diet. He also spent time learning how to correct his pushup form in order to get the most out of each of his 100 daily reps, all of which he believes helped him to build more muscle in the latter half of the year.
While his weight at the end of the year-long challenge is roughly the same, Whyte says a larger proportion of that is now muscle. “The results were not massive, but there were results from what I’d consider a relatively small effort each day,” he says, acknowledging that he purposely chose a daily target which was not excessively physically intense, but achievable, as his real goal was to build a habit which can then form the foundation of his future workouts as he continues his fitness journey.
“Doing a few pushups each day is not going to build a lot of muscle, but doing it every day will build discipline, and discipline is much more valuable,” he says.
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