While my record is nearly 4 years of pushups done daily, yesterday I successfully hit the 3 year mark.
I may continue this for life, maybe at some point I’ll move on. However I’ll say this, I’ll hit 5 years without a miss just to be able to say I did it.
In 10, 11 years of this I’ve not yet made 5 years without a miss. I’m going to make it.
May 14th, 2021 and I’ll have done it.
The cool thing is May 11, I dropped and did a set at about 1115pm hanging out with a buddy therefore keeping the streak alive. My last miss (May 13, 2016) was under similar circumstances…this time I made sure to get it done.
I dreamt of heavy smith machine bench lockouts to near failure using 4 plates for into the 30-40 rep range over 5-6 rests at the top with deep breathes (so not exactly rest pause, more like breathing squats).
Near the end a coworker jumped into the spotters position.
(He and I had been talking about the gym the night before. This must’ve stayed on my mind.)
The range of motion wasn’t perfect.
It was lockouts from middle range/halfway to as the set went on further and further from full lockout, ending with an inch or so of bend in the arms.
The dream world has given me a cool idea to try.
How much range of motion and how many reps can I smith bench 365-405 for?
In the gym there’s an echo chamber about needing everything to be perfect.
This time I’ll be focusing on nutrition, eating, food.
There’s ideal, and then there’s enough as in good enough quality, enough calories, enough protein, so on and so forth.
You learn the concept of enough real quick living physically as a laborer, not as a part of the gym’s weakness mindset.
Leave the “perfect” diet shit to those working “professionals” playing pretend inside of the gym.
At work I’ve seen dude with a sloppy drop fat gut, bad back, drug problem, and more robust physicality than all the possibly six figure making, expensive tuna steak eating, gym going males.
All “wrong” with hard work vs “perfect”…yet weak.
But that’s something of a digression.
You don’t need a massive amount of protein, calories kinda (it depends), but protein no.
The USDA 60 gram a day recommendation is closer to reality than the 1-2g per pound of bodyweight recommendation touted as gospel in gym spheres.
Despite all the naysaying…a frozen pizza gets you most of the way to enough nutrition.
Usually coming in between 75 and 100g protein, in the low 2000 calories, you’ve basically hit your protein requirements for the day, and around half of the calorie requirements often for only a couple bucks.
Daily protein intake of ½ gram per pound of bodyweight is totally acceptable, quite possibly even more than enough.
(Also note I don’t worry that there is soy filler in the meat toppings. Worrying about that is minutia, and I’ve had enough spikes in horniness after eating “dirty” foods with soy in them to say the fat and calorie bomb aspect far overshadows any negatives from the soy.)
Of all the leg extension machines I’ve used over the years, any time it has a weight selector/weight stack eventually I can rep the stack.
If on day 1 at a new gym you find this to be the case it could be perceived as a bummer, well don’t worry kids I’ll learn you how to do, to work around such a problem as maxing and repping that stack.
There’s many intensity multipliers :
•More reps
•Pauses at the top
•Isometric holds
•Slower reps
First stage you just do normal reps.
Since it’s leg work and a machine you want this to be high reps.
As that gets easier you pause for a count at contraction or very near it.
(You can also add reps to the set at the same time.)
Next stage is the doozy. After that final rep, (and you’re already doing high reps pausing at the top each rep) on the final rep you HOLD at the top, well slightly below it, and do a long isometric hold. Build this up to about 90 seconds.
After the set looks like over 20 reps with pauses each rep and a long (90 second or more) isometric hold thats when I’d say slow down the rep speed. Instead of normal speed you’ll slow the reps to at least a 4 or 5 count up and a 4 or 5 count down.
Of course you could also push the reps into the “century set” 100 rep per set range.
If all of the above has been milked out…use all of the above one leg at a time.
(Feel free to mix and match as you see fit.)
Some hints for knee health : isometric holds are better than reps.
For both holds and reps just shy of locking the knee out is the “top” of the movement. You stay under contraction and don’t get the absurd sheering forces this way.
Sometimes (and you’ll know when this is) you don’t want to do reps for health and longevity reasons. If isometric holds are still good then do them.
Leg extensions are one place I actually feel warm ups are necessary. I’ll usually do a bunch of sets of 5 reps adding weight in roughly equal jumps until I’m at the stack (or most of it if I’m going light) which is where the funs at.
I do believe leg extensions could cause an imbalance in leg musculature. For health and longevity reasons I’ll at the very least flex the hamstring (in a manner reminiscent of a standing leg curl) between sets. Do more than that if necessary. (This doesn’t seem to always apply with isometric holds however.)
Whatever bad is said about the movement I find done right the leg extension seriously helps my leg size and strength. The isometric holds for strength, and the high reps for size do far more for my quads than the “compound crew”™ would have you believe.
I’m standing around the office as farmed out labor for the day. Not where I usually work but my manager said works available there, so I took the shift. I don’t know the office staff or crew past a brief introduction a few weeks back when we sent a large crew down in a similar manpower situation.
The manager, maybe late 20s, average height (5’8″) and a well built medium size (~200) sees me (the big guy) and asks if I want to arm wrestle, and if I’d put $20 on it.
“Seeing as we have down time, yeah I’ll arm wrestle, I’m not betting though. I don’t even have 20 on me.”
He has a slightly devious look about him, I figure I’m about to be card sharped, especially when he agrees he hasn’t arm wrestled since high school.
(I legit hadn’t since then, it seems so much physical things we did as teens stop in adulthood, like pickup tackle football. This is a problem.)
He has a leanness to him, athletic. Firstly he’ll be strong for his size, probably came up through the labor force to the office. Secondly he looks like this dude (build scaled up from 5’5″ to 5’8″, even facial features and personality) I know who did tree work for a few years, then carpentry for over a decade, and had a shocking strength of hand. Very similar look to their builds.
I expected the same.
“Left arm” he goes half statement half question. “I’m right handed” my reply. “Me too, but my right arm is still sore from…” the thought drifts out.
He must be a lefty, I’m being card sharped.
The other workers have an interest.
Yeah, pool shark, whatever. The time has to be passed in some way, as some late workers have us all standing around twiddling our thumbs.
We sit. Same side of a round table. Left arm.
Lock hands… stalemate.
I’m thinking he’s not trying.
In some psychological game we both talk, while straining, not acting like it, stalemate.
At some point I realize to move my elbow closer towards him, it had slipped back. I gain maybe an inch in advantage. He verbally gives at this point, 5, 10 seconds after advantage to me, though in my eyes we’re only 30 seconds or maybe a bit more into what’ll most likely end up a multiple minute isometric grind.
Quote unquote “I won”. He insisted, said when “this happened” as he showed what’s called a top roll (I watched Pulling John) and said at that point he knew I had him.
I didn’t realize I had top rolled.
I just noticed to move elbow closer, and a slight gain past total stalemate.
I’m uncertain whether he got bored, decided not to slam me (pool shark), or legit wasn’t going to beat me.
It was a long isometric.
Fun though, and on a five minute delay my arm was shockingly sore. 30 minutes after that as we arrived on the job site it was back to normal.
I like doing this kinda thing, I’m betting it was a tie, and that his right arm was sore…from arm wrestling.
What a weird pool shark experience, weak side, terrible table option, stalemate “win”.
It’d be cool to go strong side, good table against the kid. I wonder how it’d end up going.
The other day, off from work and catching up on sleep, I took a few hour nap…mid way through while drifting in and out of sleep I fell in and out of a dream of doing pushups…
I awoke on my side, chest sore, arms straight out like the top of a pushup.
No way.
Was I doing pushups in bed… asleep?
My body definitely was firing the muscles.
(In the past I’ve woken up having headbutted the wall, right after I headbutted a guy in a dream world fight.)
Fascinating. This could be advantageous when harnessed. If one could direct their dreams…the sleep could be an effective practice/rehearsal. After all visualization is said to big for elite level performances.