Interestingly, I think this actually lines up with the program better than the original schedule. I’ve had trouble figuring out how do three days, rest, get the exhaustion test in, and rest for the next week. If I get the exhaustion test in on Thursday, I can do a light workout on Saturday, and be rested for Week 5.

This might not be the most ideal way to accomplish my 100 pushup plan. I’ve wanted to focus on my overall health first. The best way to do that might not necessarily be to stick to a rigid plan, but mixing it up and getting a variety of exercises in. I’ll concede a 10 or 12 program getting the pushups in if it means that I can get my swimming in.

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Body Stats

I usually report my weight and body fat. Unfortunately since I’m on the road this week, I don’t have a means to measure either.

Exercise

I successfully completed week 3 of the 100 pushup program. It was not fun and I barely completed it. I’m trying to go into week 4 pumped up that I’ll be complete it, but logically each week has gotten tougher. Unless, something suddenly clicks, I’m going to be repeating a few weeks before I can get to 100 pushups.

I don’t mind if it takes me some time to reach 100 pushups. I’ve already gotten one of the best compliments in a long time. I was typing on the computer on the bed and my wife tried to surprise me. She came running into the room and did a face first dive on the bed. Unfortunately she rammed her nose straight into my arm. She thought she broke he nose (she didn’t), but managed to get out, “I forgot that you were doing those pushups.”

In addition to the pushups on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I added swimming every day. On Tuesday I even did a little of an elliptical trainer (just 15 minutes or so).

Nutrition

I had a pretty unusual week of nutrition. Since I am staying in a hotel, I’ve been looking for hotel friendly food. Breakfast and lunch most days consisted of edamame, South Beach bars, peanuts, apples, bananas, and beef jerky. I grazed on them and it was fabulous.

Dinner was a different story. My wife wanted experience some of the fun places in Los Angeles that’s she’s never got to try. We went to Gordon Ramsey’s for our anniversary (horrible), Mastro’s to make up for a bad night at Gordon Ramsey’s (awesome), and one night at Fogo de Chao (all you can eat meat – always good). Gordon Ramsey’s was the only one approaching healthy since they seem to be against giving you food with your dinner.

Having two great meals makes me feel that I came out ahead… especially with all the exercise I got in. All in all, I’m happy with the week’s gains. Of course there’s always room for improvement next week.

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It started on Sunday night. My wife said, “Honey, I think I’d like to try that 100 pushups thing as well. We can do it together. Will you wait for me to do it?” I had suggested it to her way back when and this seemed to be a reasonable request, so I agreed. Monday came along, and I did my typical swimming routine in the morning. I got a little lost in my work and looked up to see my wife had come back from her Body Pump class at the gym. Now I knew she wasn’t going to be in any condition to do her push-ups, but I asked to make sure. I was right, she would have to start the program another day. As far as health goes, if you are going to skip exercise for more exercise, that’s hard to argue with.

So there was the change-up… I had switched my swim and push-up routine. That lead to the sinker… I had used up so much energy swimming that I couldn’t complete Day 7 of the program.

Maybe it wasn’t the swimming. When I look at the program I think there might be a flaw. At the end of week two, I did 34 push-ups in my exhaustion test. That set me up for a week three, where I start off with a set of 25. That 25 in the first set took it’s toll by the 4th set when I could barely do ten. There was no hope of me finishing off with another 25. It got me thinking. What if during my exhaustion test, I had been able to do 26 push-ups? That would have put me in the range to do 25 and the start end, pretty much the maximum effort I would give if I just had to do one set.

Where do I go from here?
It makes little sense for me to go to Day 8 today. Instead, I will repeat Day 7. If I get Day 7 down, I’ll move to Day 8 on Friday. Next week, I’ll restart this week again in hopes of doing days 7, 8, and 9. If successful, I’ll move onto Week 4.

I’m pretty disappointed have to repeat this week 3. At the same time, I realize the benefit of building up a stronger base that will help carry me through the rest of program.

Photo Credit: Doug Greenberg

Today, I did the end of week two exhaustion test. I was hoping to pull off a 42. I figured that would put well on track to hit 100 at the end of week 6 (I’m figuring some diminishing returns will happen). I thought about taking a day of rest, but a friend mentioned that he discussed it with Steve and it would be okay to do the exhaustion test today. I was happy with that, because I wanted to stay on the same schedule, M, W, F. If I waited until Sunday to do the exhaustion test, I wouldn’t be very good at Monday’s next work out.

Perhaps due to some lingering tiredness, I was able to do only 34 pushups. I say only, but that’s a solid gain compared to the 20 initial ones I did.

Here are some links that I liked this week from the Fitness Health Network:

Looking For A Little Healthy Inspiration – NCN had a bad week and it looks like he broke one of his 99 Changes – Giving Up Sodas. It touched me that he drew strength from the rest of us.

Cut One Soda A Week – Jim suggests that you cut a soda a week. It amazes me how many people still drink full calorie soda. It makes sense if you are worried about the artificial sweeteners, but if not, at least switch to diet.

5 Tips to Prevent Elbow Injuries – Jim, meet WeightLadder… You’ve got problems, he’s got answers.

Here is a graph of my weight loss (if you are reading this in the future this graph will have updated for future weigh ins as well)… Clicking the image will open to a larger image.

This week I continued my knee up version of the 100 pushup challenge.  I have had no trouble thus far with the 3rd level.  I even set a new consecutive push up mark at 35.

I was even able to swim…  I bought a buoy for my legs that you hold between your knees to keep your feet on top of the water…  I only swam twice, but as mentioned about the smoke from the fires has caused a health warning for much of the last week.

I am open to other suggestions for exercise given that my ankle is out of commission and bay area residents are supposed to stay indoors.  Any ideas?

I think I am going to start a upper body lifting program tomorrow morning after swimming. Until next week. 

Overall Body Stats
I woke up this morning and measured my body fat. As I always do, I used two scales – one that uses Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) from my feet, Tanita Body Fat Scale – and one that uses it from hands – Omron Handheld Fat Loss Monitor. I find that they give me fairly different numbers, so I average them together to get the best overall pictures. In the future, I hope to add my Wii Fit age in, but I find that it varies wildly depending on the exercises it gives me.

When I measured myself today, I had the following stats:

• Weight: 169.5 pounds
• Body Fat: 20.05%

Exercise
I had one of my best weeks of exercise in a long time. If I didn’t, I’m not sure that I’d be posting this. With my apartment fixing the pool, I got to experience the great exercise that swimming is. I swam Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday doing 20, 30, and then 40 laps each day.

I continued with my 100 pushup plan (official website). I already wrote about Monday’s effort. Wednesday, Day 5, of the plan, went better than I could have imagined. After the first four sets, I thought I was done. I didn’t see how I was going to get 15 or more in the last set. I decided to take a new approach. I picked 23 as my goal. Though I was almost done at 12, I found a way to reach back and get the adrenaline to hit 23.

As my “mentoress” would say: I just realized something… something that really never occurred to me before… I’m gonna win. I’m am going to be able to do 100 pushups.

Eating and nutrition
I tried to focus my efforts on low carb, high protein eating this week. I didn’t really focus on this until Wednesday after I got a chance to go shopping. I am aware of the dangers of eating too much protein, but I still believe it’s the best way to go. I had two very large chicken breasts throughout the day. Unfortunately my plan got derailed by headaches, which usually come whenever I try to limit carbs. Perhaps I need to ease into it a little bit.

I also remembered to take a multivitamin every day this week. It’s the first time I’ve done that in a long time.

It’s very much baby steps at this stage, but I’m making progress and being healthier than I have in some time.

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What I like the most about the idea of doing 100 pushups is that it’s very much high repetition, low weight training. High reps, low weight is the same idea behinds Body Pump so the two are very in tandem. I know a lot of guys prefer to do low rep, high weight in order to build muscle mass so it’s a bit incongruous to work on your stamina. As much as I respect larger muscle mass, I don’t see the point. The one benefit of more muscle is that you have a higher metabolism but outside of that I don’t see the purpose.

One thing to note when you’re doing these pushups, the period of rest as the days progress increases. You’re supposed to rest 60 seconds between “sets” on Day one, 90 between “sets” on Day two, and 120 seconds between sets on Day Three. Keep that in mind if you’re doing these.

Anyway, Day Two was a success with only minor soreness and clicking in my elbow so we’ll keep going. On the last max-out set I was able to do nineteen pushups.

At least he wasn’t right about their being fish in the river behind my house. Since he’s a pretty good fisherman, perhaps he’s just as humbled to have not caught a fish whenever I’ve been around.

Here are some links I liked this week from the Fitness Health Network:

Idea: Going Vegetarian For One Week – Jim is going to try to be a vegetarian for a week. In the past, I’ve tried it for a few meals and failed.

100 Pushups: Week One, Day Three – J.D. is repeating the first week of one hundred pushups. I barely survived the first week. I may be repeating week two.

Master List of Unconventional Benefits of Weight Loss – Israel has a list of unconventional benefits to weight loss. I wouldn’t have thought donating clothes to charity as one of them. That would mean that I would have to buy all new clothes.

100 Push Ups Week 1 Day 1 – 42 Push Ups!!! – No. Calories needed has joined the 100 push-up craze.

The Karl Lagerfeld Diet – Weight Loss Journal reviews the book. I liked this line: “The main premise of the diet is to simply lower the amount of calories you’re taking in and exercise more.” It’s too bad, I was looking for a diet that requires no exercise and lots of eating.

Now, you may also remember I started the 100 Pushup’s regime last week. I made it through the first week without incident except my elbow started intermittently clicking and was starting to get sore. I mentioned to Nickel, who started his own fitness blog at fit36.com, and he said it could be bone rubbing on bone. I think I just stretched out some tendons and need to just rest it a little.

As such, I think I’m going to take a one week break from the pushups (which is really the only activity that strains the elbows) to see if my elbow gets back to normal.

Elsewhere in the fitness world, there’s been a deluge of posts about diets. Fat Man Unleased unleashed a post on the 4 physical laws of dieting while Lazy Man was concerned about the safety and effectiveness of diet pills. Not to be outdone, Weight Ladder gave 3 tips on how to avoid diet stress.

Finally, NCN shares a recent trip to the dentist and some basic dental hygiene tips.

Today, I did the first day of exercise which consisted of more and more pushups. According to the tables for Week One, I had to do 10, 10, 8, and 6 pushups, with sixty seconds rest, followed by a “pushup until failure” phase of at least 7. On the “pushup until failure phase” I was able to get out 12.

The 10, 10, and 8 pushup rounds were pretty casual. I didn’t feel particularly fatigued but near the end of the 8 I was starting to feel it. The round of 6 was less nice and then the maxout round really took whatever I had left out. I think the last three pushups were barely “good” and then I stopped. I didn’t want to do bad form pushups just to get the number higher, because that’s not particularly useful.

So, day one is in the books and already I’ve done 46 more pushups than I would have today.