I have seen a number of bloggers doing this right now – the fabulous Miss Shauna of Diet Girl comes to mind – but I have to admit I was most convinced by a friend, who reported that after four weeks of push up training, her girlfriend suddenly received two compliments in one day on her shoulder muscle definition. That convinced me! I want beautiful arm muscles, too! One hundred push ups, here I come!
I have a lot of shoulder instability, which is partly due to the fact that I habitually slouch forward and curl my right shoulder even further forward. I’m not sure why this is, but I know that if I move that shoulder back to what feels like “neutral,” I can’t quite reach the keyboard with my right hand! That seems weird to me. Does anyone else have this problem? I wish I could force it to stay in place somehow. I know my body is wide and there is extra fat in the way, but I think the muscles there are also just not doing their job.
As further evidence, in Yoga class, downward facing dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana) is an especially challenging position for me. Not only are my arms weak, but they have to hold up all the extra weight on my torso. It drives me nuts that this is supposed to be a relatively relaxing pose. The instructor always says, “Ahhh, doesn’t that feel good?” And I’m sweating to hold the pose, breathe, and focus on my form and not on the pressure on my hands and wrists.
My Yoga instructor, bless her, is also inordinately fond of having us go from Adho Mukha Svanasana into a plank position, do a few tiny pulses with our arms (like mini pushups! oh joy!) and then back into plank and back up into the Svanasana. We’ll do that like three or four times, or sometimes hold a plank for 20 seconds. Those are the days that I really wish for more upper arm strength. I usually have to do the half-plank position from my knees instead.
It looks like I’ll be starting my push up challenge on my knees too, because when I performed the initial test, I did not even have enough arm strength to lower myself smoothly from plank all the way down to the ground, never mind lift up from there. (Also, pay no attention to that clicking noise in my wrist!) Level one it is, then! I will stick with the Mon/Wed/Fri plan unless that starts to wreak havoc with Wednesday Yoga.
In college, my hallmate posted a sign on her door that promised $50 to the first person who could do fifty true push ups. On weeknights she would come back from her runs and get everyone to come out in the hall and do pushups with her. No one ever made it to 50 that I know of, but I loved the camaraderie we all had together. It also reminds me of that combination adrenaline-high/total exhaustion/endorphin rush I would get at roller derby practice when they made us do push ups with our skates on (which means your legs are higher, making the whole thing more challenging). I’ll be doing these push ups partly in honor of those good memories, because I know that I am happy when I push myself, even if I haven’t been doing much of it lately.
