The human
form allows for a push-up to be a primary function of working out. Nearly all upper
body exercises trace their lineage to push-ups. Raw as physics, elegant as
creation. Body weight and gravity -- push the body away from the Earth’s
gravitational pull as many times as possible. The simplicity. The beauty. The
agony.
Revisiting
the fractional push-up challenge excited me. Focusing on push-up training taps
into my love for exercises that take me on a walk down the lonely road. Work
has to be done, and on my own. The work Jaron assigned was a basic high rep,
long rest set of push-ups. Twice a week for six weeks I did five rounds of forty push-ups on five minute intervals. Warm up the shoulders with a few sets of ten,
then get it on! Two hundred push-ups across twenty minutes is middle of the pain
spectrum for workouts. But two days later the soreness grenade explodes. Overnight,
the sternum’s anger draws in the pectoral muscles, causing the shoulders to
roll and the back to hunch. The toes hurt too. After being a fulcrum for all
the push-ups, a slight drag to the step can be seen by the villagers. Envy not Quasimodo, the bells of my cathedral
will ring once I can raise the hands above my belt.
The
challenge goes as follows: Start with 20 push-ups, rest :30 seconds. Then
proceed to remove one rep every round on :30 seconds rest, down to 1 rep. The Valley
of Death version calls for going back up to 20 after hitting 1. Adding one rep
each round. When all is said and done, it is a 420 push-up workout. This go
around I decided near the bottom to revise the rest from :30 seconds to :20.
Twenty-five minutes later the sweat poured and life was still grand.
Next
challenge: Spartan 300
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