Push-ups in the time of lockdown

I’m sure we have all dabbled in exercise at some point in our quarantine. At some stages, it’s felt like there are few other options to overcome this stagnation with the feeling, or even just the illusion of progress.

The sense of becoming, of evolving towards something, is part of what makes life fulfilling. Now that it has been compromised, I have found myself constantly reaching for activities with a concrete goal, or a metric for measuring growth.

I pine for growth and progress. This has led me to such disparate activities as YouTube yoga, oil painting, road running, short-story writing, teaching my child to ride a bike, and trying to read the entire works of Shakespeare.

As each of these fads has run its course, I have found my way to a final, ultimate Lockdown Quest: To do 100 push-ups.

When I embarked on the challenge six weeks ago, I could do precisely 24 push-ups, so it is a rather ambitious, and possibly doomed goal. But the process, ah. The process is amazing.

The practice I have chosen operates out of the credibly named 100pushups.com. It is based on the idea that the best way to learn to do many repetitions of something, is to regularly do that thing – but in low numbers, without reaching failure.

The upshot is that the programme involves doing constant short sets of push-ups, all day, every day. I am currently in the middle of a week that sees me doing three sets of 14 push-ups, six times a day, every day.

The sets are so short, that you never become physically exhausted, but as the weeks pass, the push-up worms its way into your consciousness.

I’m constantly either doing a set of push-ups or counting how many I’ve done, or how many I have left to do. Keen to do them effectively, I have studied the mechanics of the push-up and the precise best form in which to execute the perfect push-up.

Extend the head, shoulder blades back, arms near the body, clench your bum, and go for it, with rhythmic, metronomic regularity.

The zen-like process of doing only one movement, precisely, repetitively, thousands of times, for week after week is more like meditation than exercise. It is a mental undertaking, because you need to be consciously present in the moment to execute every push-up properly, in order to achieve a new maximum.

The rhythm of my up-and-down, slightly back-and-forth push-up doing has entered my waking and sleeping hours. I have a sense of rocking, pulsing, clenching and releasing my way through life. I dream of a patch of carpet zooming in and out of focus before my eyes.

My push-up maximum? Well, after spending the best part of two months doing push-ups non-stop, I can now complete a total of 36 push-ups.

I perceive some improved definition in my body, my posture has improved, and I am pain-free. Every Sunday, when I do my weekly push-up test, I feel a small glow of confidence within myself. I have done two more push-ups than last week. Three maybe. Even four, the one time.

That little glow is something invaluable – it’s achievement. I have set myself some little, incremental goals, and bit by bit, I am achieving them. “At this time”, when so much is beyond my control, beyond our control, I have found something. Something to work on.

I’m sure we all have something like that. I wish you the very best with yours, whatever it is. Good luck with your project. Push on!

Hagen Engler. Picture: Supplied

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