Friday, July 25, 2008

About the 100 push-ups thing...

I've been seeing a lot of the 100 push-ups challenge lately, and while it sounds impressive on the surface, in reality it's just a fad, and one that will probably fade pretty quickly. I'm all for things that will get people excited about exercise, but this fails on many levels. First, it's not a comprehensive fitness program, as it focuses on only one upper body exercise. Getting good at push-ups will not address more important and commonplace issues such as poor cardiovascular health and obesity. Second, it's a very aggressive challenge, one that most non-athletic folks are likely to fail at, which will only make them feel worse about themselves. Finally, everybody's physical ability and fitness level is different, and it doesn't make sense to set the same goal for everyone. Getting fit is not a sport or a competition. It's about being the healthiest that you can be given your medical condition, age, and other factors which vary from person to person.

A better approach is a sensible, balanced, and achievable program with tailored goals based on individual circumstances. Such a program would include core conditioning to strengthen all the important body muscles, aerobic exercise to improve cardiovascular health, and proper dieting techniques.

Anyway, I don't want to rain on anyone's parade--and I'm sure there are people who will disagree with me, but I just wanted to state my own opinion.

Here are a couple of links that I found to be relevant:

http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/abdominalcorestrength1/a/NewCore.htm
http://xpuff.blogspot.com/2008/06/please-stop-it-with-100-pushups-thing.html

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this post. I've tried to do the hundred pushups program several times. It always takes me longer than it should and right now I am stuck on Week 3. After several tries I did Week 3, day 1. I tried to do Week 3, day 2 and couldn't get anywhere with it. This may sound stupid but I've been looking in the mirror at my very out of shape body and feeling horrible about myself... I always get so excited about the program ("maybe this time I'll be able to do it") and I was starting to wonder because I see so many blogs where people say they had no trouble with the program at all and it makes me wonder what's wrong with me that I can't seem to do it right. I've been looking all over for some information about how to keep doing it, looked up steroids information, testosterone supplements, etc. I do want a nice body that I don't have to be so ashamed of but I don't know if I'll ever get that. I read somewhere that small wrists (which I have) make building muscle difficult, but of course things on the Internet are false more often than not. One thing that's for sure is that the hundred pushups program is just a bunch of false hope just like every other fitness program out there.