Twenty Full Push-ups Done With Proper Form- That's the Goal!

Right now, I don't have the strength to do one.

How I Plan to Celebrate the New Year

I also have a rather old familiar habit of not seeing this as being at all possible for me. All previous attempts to change this got abandoned almost immediately. In this photo to your left, you can see a graphic I worked on and did not finish last year, with all the various strength training exercises that can help someone who really wants to learn how to do a proper full military pushup, with good form. 

I couldn't even bring myself to complete the illustration, much less get started with actually doing the work.

Not For Fat Kids

What stops me?  Well, I carry around this rather shameful memory of when I was 8 or 9 years old and we all got tested for the Presidential Fitness Challenge. We ran a mile and did curl-ups. Those were okay. What knocked me out of the running were pull-ups and push-ups. I failed miserably. While legions of my classmates all got their pretty patches and awards signed by  President Nixon,  I took on the label of "Fat Kid."  I don't think the intention was to discourage me, but that's what I chose to do with the experience. Over time, it has become a fixed identity and a habit that I'd like to upgrade. 

I know I'm not as alone as I felt in the third grade. In researching the program and finding a picture of the award I never got, I found out that this program was ended a few months ago. Oh well. I've decided that when I succeed with my goal of 20 pushups, I'm going to photoshop a copy of this award and hang it in my office. 

Back to my dilemma:  If I can't do one pushup, how do I get to twenty??

What I need to do is figure out what I CAN do and come up with a program that will allow me to get a little stronger every day.. The good news is that I have already done the research, and I know all the steps that can lead me there. There are things I can do today: Wall pushups, planks, using weights, reducing my weight, and building up strength. A little at a time. If I do ONE Percent more each day, I'll be ringing in the new year in my own nerdy way, and will give myself my own fitness challenge award.  I wonder if you, like me, have trouble visualizing our current POTUS dropping and giving us all 20.   ((!!!))

Implementing the GOYA FACTOR!

I'm once again adding push-ups to my new year vision board. The difference is that this year, I'm also committing to the GOYA factor. This is a concept that my supervisor Brad Pendergraft taught me years ago. GOYA= Get Off Your... Assets. Yes, get moving. I can't get strong enough to do pushups through visualizing. I actually have to lift my carcass off the couch and do some strength training.


What do I do once I get up off the couch?  Start small.

Moshe Feldenkrais, a movement educator, encouraged students to go really slowly in the process of successfully achieving a movement. I'm starting by imagining myself doing 20 full warrior pushups. What is the posture? how do I position my arms and fingers? What are the muscles being recruited? Where does the movement start? Does it start in my triceps, or in my core as I begin to exhale? What do I do with my breath? How do I know that I'm maintaining a straight line? Do I have a very clear and embodied felt sense of what a proper pushup feels like?

Once I'm there, I can go to the wall.  I can do a wall push-up. For the past four days, I've been doing three sets of 30 wall push-ups. This may seem like small potatoes, but I know that toward the end of each set, it gets a little more challenging, and I can definitely feel that something is going on in my muscles because they're talking to me.

During the first set, I pay attention to form. Hand placement. What muscles are firing? What other muscles could I recruit that would make this even easier?  I experiment with my hand angle and how much my fingers are spread apart. I put my attention on my shoulder blades and the muscles in my upper back. I experiment with what it's like to start the movement from my core. 

Suddenly, I've gone from feeling like a weenie for doing wall pushups to feeling like a total badass. My form is impeccable, and I'll keep that form as I get stronger. 

What's also great about this is I can reduce my risk of injury which would really throw a wrench in the system. If I stressed and strained and huffed and puffed to do a pushup today, I'd get frustrated, and I might end up pulling a muscle or a tendon. 


Each day, I'm writing down exactly what exercises I did that helped me gain the strength I need to do those pushups. Each day I'll be adding a little more of a challenge to the daily challenge. Every day I'll see what small addition I can make that will lead me to my first complete pushup. It's a surprisingly powerful concept behind the Weber-Fechner law of physics. 

Bear in mind, I got a D in physics in high school. My explanation will not be sciencey. If you want sciencey, I invite you to google it. Basically, it's about human perception. Imagine being in a dark room and lighting a candle.  You notice that the candle has been lit because one candle in the darkness makes a big difference. But now imagine that the lights are on in a room and you light a candle.  It's hard to notice the increase in light because the amount of light added by the candle is so slight in comparison to the amount of light already in the room. 

How does this apply to my project of doing a pushup?

I'll share an experience I had in a yoga class several years back. Toward the end of class, we were instructed to exhale, take our hands and grasp opposite elbows, bend from the waist, and hang there. My elbows were hanging somewhere just below my knees and about a foot from the floor. The instructor had us close our eyes and just focus on our breathing, staying just at the edge of flexibility. No stressing or straining. Just breathing, and with each breath, letting go a little more, with ease.

I can't tell you how many minutes this went on or how many breaths we took. I will tell you that on one exhale, the instructor pressed on the spot between my shoulder blades and gently pushed me down maybe less than half an inch. As she did, I felt my forearms touching the floor.  I was SO surprised and delighted!  

Just Noticeable Difference

The weight of a feather, barely noticeable,
can add up when multiplied

What happened in that yoga class was that I got to the floor gradually. By adding a just noticeable difference, it was within a range that seemed easily possible. I didn't perceive any change because the change was so small.  In weight training, if you add weight equivalent to the weight of a feather to someone's barbells, they won't notice the difference. Over time, that just noticeable difference adds up and compounds itself. Someone who was bench pressing 100 pounds with these slight additions could go from 100 to 150 in this way without even noticing the increase. 

Success is contagious!

The benefits of my project go way beyond the idea that by the new year I'll be doing pushups. The other cool thing is that I'll have company! I was telling my mom about it the day before yesterday. She's 30 years older than I am and now she's doing wall pushups and feeling proud. I told my next door neighbor about it a couple of days ago, and now every time I see her, she's updating me on her wall pushups. 

How about you? Are you with me?  If you already do pushups, what is your equivalent challenge? How can you break it down and find a project small enough that you can practice every day? If so, I would LOVE to hear about it!!