13 Pushups, 67 Situps

I’ve always been rubbish at pushups and situps. My lower body is much stronger than my upper body. Understandable, I guess, since my lower body has to carry around my upper body at various speeds depending on my rate of activity, or whatever the “experts” call it.

But clearly the upper body needs some attention as well as the lower body. And in the absence of any money to go a-gymmin’, I may as well use my own body for some strength training. In my past experience, though, it’s easy to start doing some pushups, situps, whateverups and just get bored/achey partway through and give up.

If Couch 2 5K taught me anything, it’s that a sense of structure and some clearly defined goals really help. So I downloaded the “100 Pushups” and “200 Situps” apps for the iPhone (which are currently on special offer, incidentally) and decided to give them a go.

The first thing they ask you to do is see how many of each exercise you can do in one go. I managed a pathetic two pushups before falling over. Rubbish. But theoretically the programme will allow me to build this up gradually at a rate appropriate to me. I managed 12 situps (or, more accurately, crunches), though, which was better.

Each day of the programme gives you a bunch of sets to do, with varying numbers of reps in each one. It seems to go “quite a lot”, “a bigger lot”, “less of a lot”, “less of a lot again” and “quite a lot to finish”. The exact number varies according to how pathetic your initial performance was. As a result, I was doing sets of 2-5 pushups at a time, while situps varied between 12-18 at a time.

We’ll see how it goes. As Couch 2 5K also taught me that good habits and regular routine is important, I’m intending on doing these exercises on the same days I go for runs (Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday in most cases) so I can have Super Happy Awesome Fun/Painful Exercise Days followed by Ow I’m In Agony But At Least I Don’t Have To Exert Myself Days.

Watch this space for regular progress reports. And feel free to comment or join in. Everything’s better with friends, right?