Reckoning with 100 Push-Ups a Day
I've been doing 100 push-ups daily for over two years. Something I've thoroughly enjoyed. Until someone told me recently I might be doing more harm than good.
Earlier this week I was getting ready to post an essay, on this very website, about the merits of doing 100 push-ups a day. A task I’ve been completing for a little over two years. Here’s a brief summary of what that essay would have been:
Doing 100 push-ups daily is an exercise in psychology and will, not in brute strength. There’s something to be said about finding a moderately difficult, but achievable task each day and committing to that task. Doing 100 push-ups is therefore, a way of life. Part of a larger daily package to help with long term health gains. Ultimately one that has provided me both mental and physical satisfaction for a long period of time.
Before publishing that essay, I floated this concept to one of my friend’s brothers1 who does physical training and works as a health coach.
He proceeded to chastise both me and his brother (a fellow 100 push-up a day-er) for said activity, claiming that doing a repetitive task like that day in and day out will never result in any physical gains. Furthermore, without taking any days off to rest, and doing that same repetitive task time and time again, we could even be hurting ourselves in the long term.
Sure, he said, we can do 100 push-ups a day now, but what about in five years? Ten years? There’s a good chance we’re building strain in our elbows, in our joints, that could end up being counterproductive down the road. He claims there are other ways we can build up our chest, our triceps, and we need to be more efficient with our joint movements.
This was devastating to hear.
Both me and my friend pushed back, arguing that 100 daily push-ups is part of a larger daily package. That it’s not just the 100 push-ups, 100 push-ups is just the starting point. A baseline that can be negotiated from there. But still, he did not relent. He encouraged us to avoid the repetitive motion, to find other daily goals and targets that would be less harmful or counterproductive.
***
And so, when I went to do my push-ups later that afternoon, my joints really did hurt. My elbows, which I hadn’t really considered or thought about in this two year journey, were sore. It was a grind that afternoon doing something that had been a breeze for so long. Even the next day, building my 100 push-ups into a larger exercise routine, the act of doing them was difficult, mentally taxing, draining even. I didn’t get the same satisfaction that I had been receiving for such a long time. Which led me to the next day, when I didn’t do 100 push-ups at all.
This has happened plenty of times over the past two years—me not getting all 100 push-ups done. But never like this. In the past, it would have been because I was truly too busy, or too tired, or traveling cross country and didn’t find the time to squeeze it in. This was different.
On that day, I just decided not to do them. I gave up.
***
I’m ashamed to admit I can let the opinion of others sway how I feel on certain topics. If someone I trust recommends a film, or a writer, or a TV show, I will likely convince myself what I’m consuming is good content. If I’m at a comedy club, and everyone around me is laughing, I too can get swept up in the atmosphere. I’ll find myself laughing at something I wouldn’t normally find funny, or not as funny as it feels in that particular moment.
These influential voices and opinions can even creep up from within. Sometimes I don’t even need another person for me to challenge a long standing belief of mine. Take, for example, the quality of my writing. I started working on my novel in October 2022, and spend plenty of time thinking the work is productive, interesting and a worthwhile project for me to be putting so much effort towards. But every now and then, that opinion will change. I’ll read a few pages of my book and cringe.
This, I’ll think to myself, is not good work. I know what good work is. I read it all the time from great writers, from my peers, from others who are working on worthwhile projects. What I’m working on at the moment, is at its very best, just fine. Nothing more. It’s not awful or embarrassing, which maybe would be easier for me to wrap my head around. To be able to come to terms with the fact that I’m simply not good at this. But no, I couldn’t be so lucky. My writing isn’t terrible, or great—it’s just—fine.
It's not fun, to say the least, when that voice creeps into my head. When I have to perform a surgical operation on my brain to get back on track. I’ll remind myself that even if the work is just fine, that it’s my job to change it. That I’m the only one capable of making it better than fine, perhaps even something that veers closer to “Good.” Eventually, once I’ve completed this act of mental gymnastics, I will usually get back to work.
The writing, continues.
Which begs the question—when it comes to my 100 daily push-ups, should I do the same? Should I just… get back to work?
***
In Robert Pirsig’s classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance he explores the difference between Classical and Romantic thinkers. The novel2 profiles a real life cross country trip that Pirsig took with his six year old son, riding his motorcycle from Minnesota to California. The narration switches back and forth from this journey to discuss philosophy, using the mechanics of motorcycle maintenance as a metaphor to investigate these two clashing ways of thinking.
Classical thinkers, as he describes them, are those who want to peer under the hood and understand the nuts and bolts of the operation. They want to immerse themselves in all the detail, and have a firm grasp of all the technical workings, something that provides them great satisfaction. These people, Pirsig argues, are systemic thinkers.
Romantic thinkers on the other hand, just want the motorcycle to work. They don’t view it as a complicated web of systems, but as a vessel they can use to find truly meaningful connections. Bogging one’s mind into the overly complex technical jargon, only tarnishes the beauty that can come from fusing a motorcycle journey with the mind and soul. Romantic thinkers too, he says, are typically skeptical of technology. The nuts and bolts of what’s really behind the curtain can be terrifying, and so these types of thinkers do all they can to avoid it.
When I go to send an email, I can acknowledge that I don’t care to understand all the technical coding of how that came to be. I just want the email to send successfully. Even tasks that I do immerse myself into the finer details, such as cooking, I still convince myself there’s an element of art and feel associated with it, rather than a rigid set of steps and rules that I have to follow. Same goes for writing.
***
So it’s possible when it comes to doing 100 push-ups a day, I didn’t want to know what was under the hood. That when I finally got a glimpse of it, I didn’t like what I saw. It’s true, I want my 100 push-ups to be meaningful. To be productive, a daily psychological victory of mine, that’s achievable day in and day out, over and over and over again. Sure, the form should be good, and I understand the value of rest, and I know, certainly, that I’m never going to achieve maximum strength just from doing 100 push-ups. I definitely don’t want to create habits now that will give me joint pain the future.
But whether I like it or not, that day is coming.
There will come a day when I can’t physically do 100 push-ups anymore. My muscles and joints will be too tired, too weak, and I’ll no longer be physically, or even mentally up to the task. This will be a sad day. One I’m hoping is still a long way away.
Until then, I hope I’m able to complete as many push-ups as possible.
Maybe roughly, 100 a day.
Who is also a friend.
This book is more of a blend of memoir, and philosophy than a traditional “novel.” It’s probably classified as a work of fiction given some of the characters are “absurdist” or sets of dialogue stray too far away from what was actually said in real life. I read it, however, as a work of nonfiction.