It’s been over three weeks since the push-up duel ended. Did the push-ups abruptly end? Not for me. Two reasons:
- Like Pavlov’s dog, I’m now conditioned to do push-ups. “Never Gonna Stop” by Rob Zombie comes up on my music playlist and I feel like throwing myself on to the floor to begin push-ups.
- The 20,013 in 2013 challenge is ongoing – and I haven’t give up on the idea of completing it.
I have 3,069 push-ups to date this year. Well, actually 3,081 but the first 12 didn’t count as they were before I officially “signed up” for the 20,013 in 2013 challenge.
Some people have been incredibly supportive of me in my push-up quest. “Thunder John” even wrote a rather nice post about me on his blog! (… and yes, I AM single!)
Some people have not been particularly keen on the idea of me doing all these push-ups. For example, my chiropractor and my personal trainer. For some reason, they do not seem to understand that… IT’S A CHALLENGE! That’s like a DARE! I HAVE to do it! I was raised with the “don’t quit” attitude… the “you don’t fail unless you fail to try” mentality. That may sound good, even admirable… until you really get that “OR DIE TRYING” part of the equation. I don’t think I’m particularly noble – what I am is incredibly pig-headed and stubborn.
So, for exampe, I met with my trainer last week. I told him we needed to baby some muscle located over my right shoulder blade. My trainer is smart and awesome and was asking questions to evaluate my injury. Like “when does it hurt?” Oh… it hurts like when I did push-ups the night before. Ron asked how many I’d done… oh, 97. Ron’s response was “NINETY-SEVEN? WHY???” Because! Challenge! 20,013 in a year.. that’s 55 a day! If I’m going to do push-ups every other day that’s like 110 every other day!
Ron asked when else it hurt, besides when I did push-ups. Oh, when I put pants on. He had me go through some various range of motion type things, and decided it was not a rotator cuff. (I guess that’s bad if it’s a rotator cuff… I don’t know, Ron was explaining it and I got distracted by another guy at the gym wearing a t-shirt that had the “pi” symbol on it. I have a short attention span, and rotator cuffs seem boring.)
Anyway, Ron’s solution to my “injury” was to not to so many push-ups. That’s just crazy talk. However, we only did six that night, because he suggested we do “uneven” push-ups with a medicine ball under one hand… and I did five on one side – one on the other side and determined that hurt really really bad.
The next night, though, I was back at it. I did 113 push-ups, pushing through the pain. This may have been a bad decision. My muscle graduated from “hurts to put pants on” to “hurts to breathe…. at all… ever”.
To top it off, it snowed Thursday night. I had to shovel my own walk – and I helped my neighbor with hers. The muscle was really screaming after that. Curses upon nature and nature’s stupid snow.
So, I haven’t done any push-ups since Wednesday. My “cushion” in the challenge is rapidly deteriorating. I’m hoping I’ll heal and be back to it soon. Climbing into a box of pita crackers and vat of hummus may help.
What did I say about not hurting yourself with too many pushups?!!?! Seriously. Listen to your trainer! I hope this injury is short term and doesn’t stop you from challenging yourself! Maybe I will try reverse psychology and challenge you to not do any pushups ’til it feels better. (BTW, it is probably your trapezius muscle.)
Well… in my defense, I did not ORIGINALLY hurt the hurting muscle doing push-ups. I hurt it doing stretching/yoga. I felt it go “TWINGE” and thought “Oh great, hurt myself doing something STUPID rather than lifting something heavy”. Now, I will admit that if I’d just not done ANYTHING to aggravate the hurting muscle for a week or two, maybe it would hurt less or heal faster… I will admit that. It probably would have been wise to avoid push-ups for a while since they hurt. But “wise” and “fun” are not the same and do not go together. 😉
I will always remember being at a function in college and one of my professors being told that one of his former students dropped dead (young, like early 40s) playing volleyball of a heart attack. Professor said “that is why I never exercise, ever, you can drop dead.”
Well… yeah. But I think living life with that mentality probably doesn’t benefit you in the long run. Could I hurt myself exercising? Yeah… I could. I am more likely to injure myself exercising than sitting on my butt making stuff out of yarn… but in the long run exercise may lead to fitness which may make me “more awesome” as Fitocracy puts it.
Anyway, for now… avoiding the horizontal press/pull… appointment with my chiropractor Thursday… and I shall go on. Yes, I shall. 🙂