Thanks to poor upper body strength, I have something in common with T-Rex.
It’s day 1 of my truncated Push Up Challenge and it went as expected. Once in the plank position, I tried lowering myself down. I ended up flat on my face.
Not very graceful.
After a few more feeble attempts, I decided to give the modified push up a try.
So how did that go? Ugly!
I didn’t kiss my yoga mat, but my arms could hardly bear my weight. I ended up rushing through 3 half push-ups before rolling over on my back cursing what I got myself into.
Wow, 25 more days of this crap! Time to temper expectations.
A Flaw In The Workout Plan
Clearly, my upper body strength sucks. All my workouts center around cardio fitness and my legs. That’s just a boneheaded move! I weigh 246 lbs., I think my legs get plenty of exercise lugging me around. And cardio fitness is a good thing, but work is sorely missed on the muscle front.
This month’s challenge exposes a serious flaw in my workout routine.
I’m neglecting my arms, chest and abs. Sure I do resistance training with bands – but not consistently. Time to modify my workout schedule and add in 3 days worth of weight training.
I do love my resistance bands – they’re portable and take up very little space. But the amount of resistance is finite. And my house isn’t equipped with wall hooks to expand the types of exercises I can do.
I see free weights in my future.
Revised Push Up Challenge
Not a quitter, I decided to try 3 wall push-ups. While much more challenging than I expected, I could actually do them – barely. Hooray! I felt stretching in my arms, shoulder and chest.
So here’s the new game plan: focus on the wall push-ups during the challenge, with the goal of moving my feet further away from the wall to increase the intensity (today I stood about 2 feet away). After each week, I’ll try the modified floor push up to check on my progress.
I love it when a plan comes together.
Related articles
- Creating My Exercise Cave (dot2trot.com)
- 8 Types of Push Ups For Women (Style Craze)
- Easy Exercise Routine For The Upper Body (healthy-weight-loss-made-easy.com)
- Day 4: Strength Training: Chest and Triceps (fitjourney50.wordpress.com)