developed an attitude problem

You? An attitude problem? Never.

I'm not in the business of counseling terrorist groups, but their plan as reported had half a dozen glaring flaws. For example, killing exactly 88 schoolchildren would be hard to do, the way they wiggle around and refuse to hold still, but 87 or 89 would destroy the symbolism. And in general, mass murderers should arm themselves before beginning their killing sprees, rather than just planning to steal some guns somewhere along the way.

There are just so few opportunities to wear formal wear in today's society; you have to seize them when you can.

Maybe they're fans of the Insane Clown Posse or some other such group favoring costumes.

I somehow missed the original push-up thread. What was the link that kicked it all off?

I think that was the "Dogless Pointedness" thread.

I keep getting sick. And I started a lot later than most. Plus I'm 50 lbs. overweight. So I've been doing weeks 1 and 2 over and over again--I keep hitting the same wall you describe.

I've put on a fair bit of arm/pec muscle, but what's really surprising to me is how qualitatively different the feel of doing an individual pushup has gotten--from a strain, if easily doable, to almost nothing.

It's pretty cool.

I got stuck on week 4 also. But I can do 40 pushups now, which is 13 more than I could do when I started.

I'm planning to get back on the program as soon as I get over this cold.

Wayne and Garth have a detention hearing tomorrow in the building where I work. I'm tempted to go see it.

qualitatively different the feel of doing an individual pushup has gotten

Yep. I started out being able to do somewhere around fifteen pushups in a set, but that was a lot of work. Now, the first ten or so I can toss off offhandedly, which leaves me very impressed with myself. Always good finding new ways to be narcissistic.

I'm tempted to go see it.

Just make sure you check the dress code before you go.

5: Here's the link. Whoever maintains the site actually revised the program kind of significantly a month or two ago -- I did week 4, got sick and skipped a couple of weeks, figured I'd go back and do week 4 again, and it had suddenly gotten much more difficult. Annoying.

8: Give them seekrit Juggalo hand signs and see if they repsond.

Anyone else surprised that Emerson knows the correct term for ICP fans?

I'm down with the skinheads and trash, dood.

I think we're going to see a fair amount more of this kind of idiotic shit. The kind of people who plan on wearing white tuxedos and top hats during an assassination are not exactly your A-list killers. The kind of people who actually get things done tend to be loners with military experience who focus on the goal at hand and avoid stupid symbolic distractions. McVeigh and Oswald types.

togolosh relentlessly denies us the fashionable world of 1960's spy movies. If there are going to be idiots like this in the world the very least we can ask is that they be interestingly dressed.

LB,

You hit the wall. Good. If you want to continue to improve you need to change your exercise somewhat every six to eight weeks. Exercise those muscles in a different way. Otherwise you plateau and may even slump some.

That's the short answer. The longer answer is to analyze what muscles or muscle fibers are your current limiting factor and work on those, but that is when you really get up there.

Switching to a slightly different lift will work wonders for most people.

Switch every six-eight weeks and you'll be great!

You made it longer than I did.

15: I'm not worried about Obama as much as I am the other targets. The high school kids the guys wanted to target don't have secret service protection.

11: I've seen the link, but what I missed was the thread where anyone explained why they thought this particular program was a good idea. I mean, yes push-ups are a good idea, but as far as I can tell this site is little (any?) better than one that just says "do lots of push-ups. regularly." The prescribed methodology seems highly suspect--I'm not sure it's even very well thought-through (which the anecdote in 11 supports). And yet for some reason I keep hearing that dozens of you were/are following this program as if it were a proven success.

Has anyone had success with it? (And by "success", I mean more success than you'd have had with "do lots of push-ups. regularly.") It seems everyone breaks down somewhere between weeks 3 and 5.

It seems everyone breaks down somewhere between weeks 3 and 5.

I suspect to make sense of this you'd have to normalize this against the time line when people typically break down in a new exercise program. And typically they do.

20: no, that's exactly my opint--this seems to be no different than any other exercise program, except it's not especially well-constructed and focuses on only one exercise. It's not a magic formula for doing 100 pushups. So I didn't understand why so many people were doing it.

Brock,

I didn't participate, but I can understand the allure of having a tangible and fairly short term goal. It can give us the positive feedback we need to be motivated.

As most people explained on the earlier threads, because it a) isn't actively harmful to do push-ups and b) it's neat to have a goal.

21: My point was that to determine if it actually *is* `not especially-well constructed" from the point of view of getting people to stick with it, you'd have to judge that 3-5 week dropout against other ideas.

Clearly it's limited in other ways, but it's not clear that the idea of people dropping at about a month in tells you anything. And it does have simplicity going for it, at any rate.

24: I guess. It just seems weird to me. Okay, you want goals: what if the goal were instead "do 100* pushups a day, in as few sets as possible?" So you do as many pushups as you can, in back-to-back sets or spread over the course of the day, whatever it takes to get to a hundred. Work slowly to reduce the rest time and the number of sets. Eventually you'll be doing 100 consecutive pushups.

It's no 6 week promise, but that website with the 6 week promise is a sham. (I can't really call it a "scam", since it's free, but it's certainly not a well-constrcted program, nor one that's likely to be effective.)

I just didn't understand why this particular program, which didn't seem very good, attracted so many followers.

*Maybe start at a lower number (40? 50?) depending on initial fitness.

25 was to 23, not 24. To 24, I didn't mean that people dropped the program at 3-5 weeks, I meant they could no longer keep up with the pace.

I stopped doing it after I found it was exacerbating my RSI. After a couple of sets, the muscles in my arms would start to feel like fallen electrical wires thrashing on the ground. I backed off. Week 3, I believe.

I've seen the link, but what I missed was the thread where anyone explained why they thought this particular program was a good idea.

Well, duh. Killing 88 HS kids doesn't sound like a good idea to you, maybe.

Wrongshore, where did you have your hands? I have some RSI, and so I avoid bending my wrists back and putting my palms on the ground for pushups; I do them on my knuckles, if there's a surface with some give, or while gripping small dumbbells, which has a similar effect.

I was going to switch to fingertips, which is how I do yoga. Maybe I'll give it another shot that way. The dumbbell idea might be easier.

Push-ups on dumbbells is another comfortable variant if you don't want to bend your wrists back.

Megan,

Yeah, but be careful with that. Sometimes they start complaining and you could be in big trouble. I mean so I've heard.

21: Seriously, I have no opinion whatsoever about the sensibleness of this program generally. But I do have the impression that if you're going to be doing one exercise (which, obviously, is not ideal) pushups are about as good to focus on as anything could be. And something with a near-term goal and an explicitly-spelled out process to get there is easy to stick with.

I mean, I'm stuck, but on the other hand my arms and upper body generally are very different than they were when I started in August, and in a good way.

33: okay, what about the program in 25? Daily goal: 100 pushups. Near-term goal: 100 consecutive pushups. Simple. Effective.

The main problem I see with 34 is that it's too short to make a web page out of.

Perhaps Brock can start the worlds first twitter-based exercise program.

But there are problems with too much simplicity in practice, as people want more handholding than that. After all "Eat less, exercise more" is a good first order approximation[*] to improving the majority of Americans health, but you aren't going to get a lot of traction (or marketable products) from it. Instead people invest a lot of money and time in far less effective (or even counterprocutive!) approaches that give them step-by-step instructions by which to fail.

[*] the second order is "Eat less & better balanced, exercise more"

I don't see that as an improvement, really. For one thing, it's a much higher baseline -- 100 pushups in a day would have taken me all day when I started. For another thing, this may be proof of lack of moral fiber or something, but I find I can do more of most things if I'm aiming at an external goal. "Do as many pushups as you can, and then do more if you can do more" isn't going to get me to do as many as "Do thirty pushups. If you can't, try again next week until you can, and then move on to the next goal."

If only this fancy web-thingamajiggy could be made to work bidirectionally, a program like the one we're discussing could be adjusted based in part on actual empirical measurements made by participants.

Three pushups for every state BarryO leads the polls of is something Jodie Foster ought to be impressed with.

----------

Hegemons are on Facebook, not MySpace.

36: Fine, than start at 50, not 100. But I don't understand the complaint about a lack of an external goal--there is a very concrete, external goal: do 50 pushups, every other day (or three days a week, if that's easier). Do them in as few sets as possible, but as many sets as you need (even breaking up the sets across the day if needed). (If you'd prefer this worded more like the directive at the end of 36, re-word as follows: "Do fifty pushups. If you can't, do several sets, or break up the sets as necessary so you do 50 of the course of the day. But be sure you do 50 in all.) Just try each time to do as many as you can in the first, consecutive set, and eventually you'll be doing a set of 50. Once you can do a set of 50 consecutive pushups, re-start the program at 100 per day. (Or, better, re-start the program with weights on your back.)

I'm sure that'd work just fine. It is probably more realistic, although still less rewarding in an interim goals way -- that is, your program has two states: can't do it yet, and did it. For someone who never makes it to 100 pushups in a row, all they've done is failed. The goofy web thing on the other hand has eighteen intermediate steps, achieving each of which is kinda rewarding in itself (Yay, I finally managed to do the Week 3, Day 2 workout without falling on my nose at any point! Woohoo!)

I'll accept that finding that sort of external goal setting helpful is probably a sign of a weak mind, but I do find it helpful, even if the specific program set out is not as well designed as it might be.

can't do it yet, and did it

No, it has "did it!", every single day, since the "it" is 50 pushups. And you get better at doing it slowly over time, in a concrete and measureable way. ("Did twenty-two consecutively today, instead of twenty!")

Obviously I need a website. Mine will, however, be subscription-access only.

No, it has "did it!", every single day, since the "it" is 50 pushups.

See, where 'it' could also be described as 'pretty much what I could do on day 1', the sense of accomplishment from doing it over and over again is diluted.

Okay, LB, normally I'd say something about the difference between realistic and unrealistic goals, but at this point I'm going to have to agree with you and write off this problem in this case as weak mind/lack of moral fiber. Go back to your fraudulent hundred pushups program. Good luck with week 4.

In response, I have no choice but to start posting progress on this thing on a bi-weekly basis. I may never post about anything else ever again.

How about a race to 50 consecutive pushups? I'll do my program, and you do yours. I'll let you decide the prize for the winner.

44: Bet that pushes you to actually get over the block. Just think -- when you are just about at your limit and ready to give up, you will be thinking, "Do I want to blog failure?"

Color-coded posts, right?

Given that you're on steroids, I'm afraid such a competition would be inequitable. If you're willing to abandon your hormonal advantage by having yourself castrated, you're on.

(Actually, I might possibly be able to do 50 now - I haven't tried for a maximum other than as the last of five sets for a while. Probably not, but I don't know what my max, when I'm fresh, is.)

48: Does castration really make one weaker? Makes sense, I guess, but I'd never really thought about it.

I actually don't know, never having done before and after testing on opposing counsel, but it seems possible.

Does castration really make one weaker?

Testosterone=big strong muscles, physical aggression, etc. Also, male testicles produce testosterone. I thought this was basic.

Does castration really make one weaker? Makes sense, I guess, but I'd never really thought about it.

SMARTER, TOO.

Also, male testicles produce testosterone

Don't even ask what female testicles produce.

53: Chard.

Shit, 53 should have been:

Also, male testicles produce testosterone

Don't even ask what female testicles produce.

ben
['Trust me, you don't wanna know.']

I'm through my second try of Week 2. Was supposed to start Week 3 yesterday but was relegated to the couch with a nasty cold. I'm starting to think the 100 pushups program actually gives its participants colds.

Don't even ask what female testicles produce

The use of female testicles, as say Columbus, Archangelus, Laurentius, and Bauhin, is by their inbred power to make the seed fruitful. Fallopius is not of this mind, Platerus halteth betwixt both; but we know assuredly that those women whose testicles are ill disposed are barren and unfruitful. For women as well as men do yield seed, but cold, though Aristotle deny it in his first book De generatione animalium and the twentieth chapter, who would have that humor which is avoided by the neck of the matrix not to be a seminary or seedy humor, but a proper humor of the place, to wit, an excrement of the womb, which also should be found in some, but nnot in others; as especially brown or swart-colored and mannish women.

That's downright interesting.

How about a race to 50 consecutive pushups? I'll do my program, and you do yours.

Shoot higher than that you big weenie. We have 60 second push up tests in training, and one of the girls is doing 49. That's higher than several of the guys.

On a completely different topic: those skinheads who wanted to assassinate Obama. I'm really stuck on the fact that they planned to carry out the attack in white tuxedoes and top hats.

Yeah, really. It's way after Labor Day.

60: I'm slapping my wrists with a yardstick for laughing at that.