I near 5 years of pushups done daily…unbroken.
13 weeks, boot camp length (I never went to) daily trombone coming up on a similar date.
Both roughly two weeks away. I had done neither for the day, yesterday. Dinner time, get it done.
- Play trombone.
- Intersperse pushups throughout.
The wind requirement is higher this way, same as in any physical superset. Don’t say playing an instrument isn’t somewhere on the spectrum of physicality, I play standing, sheet music taped to a doorway, you breath deep, and expend air with the brass band instrument.
I ponder to myself whether I :
- Naturally had a booming voice
- Built a booming voice via trombone in my youth
- Both fed into each other, option C – all of the above
I go with C. I could always be loud, but playing brass built the ability too.
Sometimes I sing as well during “music time”. The old time lifting obsession with the rib box, exercise and an instrument is a way to do this.
I may have naturally had a robust rib box. I expanded it with a million pushups, from forcibly with youth karate, to willingly at age 14 with my daily PT.
I believe the trombone built into that base. Don’t underestimate the wind a fat kid playing trombone will show once he’s dropped the fat upon finding high school sports.
Highlander status.
I didn’t figure out the Rader chest pull until an “aha” moment while in Cali, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, 2018.
Rib box came from trombone, pushups, sucking wind as a fat kid going all out during mile runs, then through weight room means. I’ve done 20 rep squats, 50/20 density power cleans. The dip odyssey of summer 2019.
Da Vinci was said to be inhumanly strong, a robust build, with freakish hand & grip strength – in addition to being possibly the smartest ever to have lived…a renaissance man.
I see him mixing tinkering, with pondering, with study, and with physical training. Very free form.
One must mix the intellectual with the physical. Playing an instrument with calisthenics interspersed throughout is a way to do this.
They feed into each other. They heighten each other. Be a smart jock, a robust intellectual.
And most importantly a Man of Action.