In addition to the various traditional techniques associated with martial arts like kicking, blocking and punching the martial arts school has a physical component in order to earn a black belt. One of those is to perform 100 push ups and 100 sit-ups. I’m assuming it’s supposed to be 100 straight, although we’ve never done more that 25 in a set in our testing. Regardless, I can’t do it at this point. Not even close.
From my years of weight training for football, I thought I had a decent start on this task. Further, the pitch the instructors use for making it seem more attainable is that a student only has to improve by 2 per month over the 4 year period towards becoming a black belt. Doesn’t seem so bad, really.
Well, I’ve been stuck at about the same level ever since my arm fully recovered from the surgery. And that level is about the same I was at prior to the surgery. I can complete about 35 for a single set, or I can manage a couple of sets of 25 before I run out of steam.
So, in order to try and make some progress, I’ve decided that over a 1 week period, I’m going to do 700 pushups- 100 per day. Today is day 3. I didn’t do push-ups per say yesterday, I used our Total Gym instead but managed to do the 100 reps in 2 sets.
My arms hurt. My chest hurts. Four more days to go. Yay.