The idea of doing 100 push-ups in 100 seconds came to me one day out of the blue. I have never tried doing it simply because such an idea had never crossed my mind. The idea of doing timed push-ups is certainly nothing new in the world. My first experience in doing exercises competitively was in high school. I took a lot of co-ed advanced weight training and one of the teachers liked to do competitions in push-ups, pull-ups, dips, max bench press, etc.

The only event that was timed was the push-ups. No one was really able to do as many pull-ups or dips as they did push-ups. In a pull-up or dip, you are generally moving almost your entire body weight while a push-up only involves about 60% of your body weight.

I never did win a push-up competition in those high school gym class days–I blame my counter. I did win a dip competition but, not because I did an insane amount of dips. Everyone else was just fairly weaker in that department. I won with about 25 - 30 dips–not that impressive.

The greatest number of push-ups I have ever done was 104–I counted 105 in my head but upon video review it was only 104. It took a lot more than 100 secs and the form could have been better at some points. After coming up with this 100 push-ups in 100 seconds challenge, I sent a text message to my closest workout buddy to see what he thought. He thought it was possible. So maybe this idea is more than just an impressive sounding marketing line.

I haven’t been doing push-ups as much as I used to. I used to be able to easily drop and punch out 50 in the past but now, I’m pretty sure I can’t just do that at will. I started training to accomplish this challenge a few weeks ago. My most recent test runs shows that I can do 50 push-ups in under 60 seconds. There is still quite some work to be done to reach 100 in 100.

So far my training has consisted of doing push-ups using a Door Gym–it’s a product that allows you to do pull-ups on a door frame. It provides elevation for my push-ups so I can increase the range of motion and work more muscles. I don’t do these push-ups fast. I have been trying to build strength and endurance so that I could do 100 push-ups for a whole 1 minute and 40 seconds at a constant pace.

In order to build strength and endurance with these push-ups, I pause for 2 seconds at the bottom of the push-up and 2 seconds at the top of the push-up without locking my elbows. It was fairly hard to do just 10 of these at first but, I can do 20 of them now. I have switched to elevating my feet above the floor to increase the difficulty.

I also do chin-ups with the same 2 second pause technique as part of this training. It might seem completely unrelated to do a back exercise but, a strong back will help keep your form when doing push-ups. I also want to make sure I keep things even so I do a back exercise as well.

The last thing I do are plyometric push-ups. I’m trying to build explosive power with these so that I can make sure each push-up will only take 1 second to finish on average because that is all the time I have. Plyometric push-ups are ones where your hands come off the floor because you pushed up with such explosive force.

I have not officially set a deadline for when I want this accomplished. Unless I set a date, this is all meaningless and will probably never get done because I have forever to accomplish it. As I am writing this, I decided that November 1st, 2008 is as good a date as any other–today is the 5th of September. I am not yet half way to the goal and there is less than 2 months until the deadline.

I will continue to report on the results. Assuming I can actually accomplish this, I will provide a video showing it. Otherwise, how will anyone know that I’m not just talking out of my ass? :)

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I never stretch before a workout. I do warm up before a workout. There is a popular myth that claims stretching will help prevent us from injury during a workout. Every gym class I had in high school taught that you should always stretch before any physical activity. The stretches were mundane and didn’t feel like it did anything to prepare me for the coming activity.

It should come to no surprise that the stretching probably did nothing to prepare you or help prevent injuries in your workout. The right idea is to warm up. You want your muscles to be ready to do work. You are better off doing a quick job on the treadmill or some shadow boxing than stretching. You can also try a better warm up stretch. Doing warm up sets isn’t a bad idea either. The point is to prepare your muscles for the activity.

I do like to promote good flexibility so I would certainly encourage doing stretches after a workout or at other times throughout the day. As a precursor to your workout, it isn’t going to do much and could possibly have a negative effect.

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Sometimes you just don’t have access to a gym. Usually, this is when our brains gives us an overwhelming reason to skip a workout. After all, we don’t have access to the equipment we need. I’m going to help you neutralize that excuse with this total body workout that only uses your own body weight.

A lot of guys believe you can’t build serious muscle without going to the gym. This is obviously not true unless you are a modern day bodybuilder. Humans have built hard bodies since ancient times without all the equipment that we have today. Your body weight is more than enough to allow you to pack on some serious muscle. You just need to understand the physics of using your body weight to its maximum potential.

With body weight exercises, you can’t increase the resistance unless you gain weight or are able to adjust gravity. However, you can still make your muscles do more work by increasing the distance it has to move. For example, a regular push-up ends at the floor. You can only go as low as the floor. To increase the distance in this case you can just start higher by putting books or some other object under your hands. Now the floor is further away and you can go lower.

The less contact you have with the floor, the more work your muscles need to do to stay balanced. In a push-up, we have four points of contact with the floor–our hands and feet. To reduce our contact with the floor we can just lift a leg or do one-handed push-ups.

Another simple way to add complexity to a simple workout is to add a twist. Most exercises are done in a single plane meaning we move in one direction. Throw a twist into any exercise and you’ll work more muscles.

Body weight exercises can be just as challenging as weighted exercises. I certainly recommend alternating between the two disciplines. Using your body weight to improve your body has the wonderful advantage of keeping muscles in balance. It also ensures that you’ve built a body that is completely functional. Still, there is nothing better than free weights when it comes to putting on pure muscle.

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