Well, today was mission accomplished. A wild idea that popped into my head about my
60th birthday was today brought to fruition. On October 12th I
suddenly thought "my birthday is exactly in one month. What
should I do to mark it?" and then the idea of doing 600 push-ups
appeared. At first I tried to dismiss it as ridiculous. After all, I
could be doing fun stuff, and this sounded like work. But the idea
hung around persistently, waving at me from the edges of awareness,
and soon I came to embrace the idea of this as a worthy challenge, a
kind of quest. A friend from the aiki side of martial arts
turned me on to a Japanese term, shugyo, for a similar type of
disciplined spiritual endeavor.
I'd
probably gone years without doing 600 push-ups, and with some
shoulder injuries, I'd only begun doing them somewhat regularly about
a year ago for rehabilitation. If I was going to make this happen,
I'd have to train for it, and so I set a secondary goal of 3000
push-ups in the one month run-up to my birthday. That meant
averaging 100 push-ups a day, which I broke up into numerous sets of
10 or 20, logging every set in my notebook. Exercise can be
addictive, and I quickly realized that 3000 was too low a goal, so
within the first few days I refocused on 4000 pushups for the month.
Sundays were my big days, doing upwards of 300 push-ups during
football game commercials, getting ahead on the count so I could rest
on another day during the week.
I
reached 4000 Monday evening, giving me Tuesday to rest up before the
big day today. Ironically, I'd been pain free all month, but the
last few days one of my shoulders was sore from working so hard. Now
the underlying goal of this quest was to strengthen deep muscle and
connective tissue. The push-ups were varied to hit muscles from
different angles to support the shoulder joint, incorporating
inclines, declines, close grip, wide grip and uneven grip push-ups as
well as traditional flat ones. Some were done for explosiveness,
others on slow count to feel the burn deeply. This was pure volume
work, more like the 6x daily Bulgarian power lifter workouts than
fatigue-and-rest body building. It was harder to start these last few
workouts because of the soreness, but once I'd done a couple of sets
to warm up, everything felt fine. I also supplemented the push-ups
with yoga stretches, Indian clubs, kettlebells, squats, pull-ups and
planks.
After
the focus and consistency to get ready, today almost felt
anti-climactic. Last night, waiting for midnight, I meditated and
examined my mental state of readiness. In my mind, I felt I had
already accomplished my goal. After the stroke of midnight I did 7
sets of 20 before going to bed, so that I wouldn't feel pressured for
time when I awoke. By noon I'd finished half, 300, and then late in
the afternoon I did the rest. Almost. I got to 580, only one more
set of 20 to go, and couldn't just do it. I felt the distance I'd
come, all the emotional and mental energy driving the physical work,
and had to let the moment marinate awhile. Finally, as with every
other set, I felt the time was right, and then it was done.
