1000 Rep Challenge

I've been trying to find a new normal the past few months. While I was never a particularly good CrossFit athlete, I did show up regularly and I put a lot of time and effort into it. It was pretty much the only thing I had left of my "old life," since I don't work in my old industry or live in New York anymore. I thought that having a new goal to work towards might help me feel a little more grounded. I was at my happiest while training for that strongman competition, which as you know, I was unable to do because I threw my back out. It's still acting up and some days are really discouraging.

Recently I came across Jeremy Thiel's 1000 rep challenge. Not entirely sure how I found it but I did drop-in at CrossFit Central when I used to go to Austin for business trips so maybe that has something to do with it. Anywho, I decided to do it. It's an 8 week program working up towards 1000 push-ups in one day. Each week you are to do a prescribed number of push-ups on a daily basis. You gradually increase the number of push-ups each week. This week we are doing 22 push-ups each day.

The push-up has always been a weak spot for me. I straight up could not do one before CrossFit. Then I developed really crappy form doing them so my CFID coaches made me switch to box push-ups. That was pretty humbling after 4 years of CrossFit, but it thankfully taught me a lot. Now I can do four chest to deck push-ups at a time. I got all 22 done this morning before I got dressed for school by splitting them up. It's going to be pretty fucking awesome when I work up to the 1,000 in one day (100 each hour for 10 hours.)

I'm going to admit that I am terrible at following through on things. I get the end result done because I do what I say I'm going to do, but I lack consistency. For example, I will skip a significant number of long runs and then run an ultramarathon. I have never followed my carefully paced out project plans, and always did ungodly amounts of work every 2-3 weeks to catch up. I want to show up for myself and prove that I can commit to something and actually do it. I've been listening to the Working Against Gravity podcast, which I absolutely love, and Michael and Adee discuss the importance of setting a goal and following through on it. By achieving the goal, you prove to yourself that you are able to commit to yourself.

I looked at some other challenges and I had an honest chat with myself and acknowledged that I'm just not in a place where I can do a #75hard. I tend to choose the hardest thing I can think of (like deciding to run a 50K instead of a half marathon) and perhaps that's why I don't commit to the process. I think the 1000 rep challenge is something I can reasonably commit to because while the 143 push-up days seem pretty daunting now, it's something I am building up to. And it takes a heck of a lot less time to do 143 push-ups than it does to sit in Atlanta traffic heading to and from a box where I was easily spending 2-3 hours.

I printed out the challenge tracker and taped them in my bathroom as a reminder to get it done.