One-Hundred or Die

So my arms are basically leaden today and my swim really sucked, despite swimming the long course, outdoors, on a beautiful summer morning - usually a real treat! But that's because I'm trying something new: I'm working on being able to do one hundred pushups, courtesy of a training plan on this website So far, I can do about 25 straight, on my toes, but by the time I get my black belt, I'd like to really be able to do a hundred, and do them well.

Really, I'd love to be able to knock off one-armed pushups like Demi Moore in GI Jane, but that's probably not going to happen any time soon. Despite being a swimmer for a long time, I don't have a ton of arm strength, which is probably a testament to using all of those lats, back, and chest muscles in my stroke and not my arms (which is a good thing for a swimmer, but bad if you want to do puships like Demi Moore). Actually, I'd settle for having Viggo Mortensen recite DH Lawrence to me and screw doing the pushups, but that's probably even more unlikely to happen (if you don't know what I'm talking about, watch him play Master Chief Urgayle in this movie.)

Now, my hubby and Viggo share a good number of characteristics - piercing blue eyes, dimpled chin, strong jaw, looking cute in little black shorts, but reciting poetry is where they part ways. My DH is many amazing things - family guy, good dad, lover of Milk Duds, he even does a mean Elvis impersonation, but reciting poetry is right out. It's a small omission when you look at the total picture, and he's the kind of guy who knows me so well he got me a BlueSeventy wetsuit instead of earrings or a blender for our anniversary, so all in all I think I'll keep him!

Hmmmm.... I seem to completely have lost track of any meaningful theme here. I'm not sure how I ended up on Elvis impersonations from pushups, but in any case my goal is 100 pushups, in a row, not necessarily one-handed, and with a poetry-reading Viggo remaining in my fantasies. So I am on Day Two of the plan as of yesterday, which just about killed me since Wednesday's karate warmups was the "Five Or Die" drill, which included triangle pushups, wall pushups, crab pushups, triceps drills with the medicine ball, and some other random torturous arm exercise I can't seem to recall right now. But even though I survived all of that, I managed to crank out today's 44 pushups (in 4 sets with 90 seconds rest in between) from Week 1 of the plan reasonably well, so I think it's really an approach that might make this doable, even for wimpy-armed little me.