WHY I DID 100,000 PUSHUPS IN 365 DAYS

Originally published: October 27, 2019

Today, I finished my last day of doing 274 pushups every day, for 365 days in a row, for a grand total of 100,010 pushups. This blog talks about what I learned from the last year. Read if you would like. If not, know that I love you!

Around this time last year, I was feeling a little weird. I had given myself a long time to reflect on Ironman training and had even given my body some of the first real rest it’s had in a long time. But I had just started grad school and was getting back into the routine that is being a student. Setting aside time to get back in the books and study, getting coursework done, working a graduate assistantship, etc. I was starting to get an itch again to be back in the gym. I had started lifting pretty consistently but wasn’t feeling the challenge that was Ironman training. When you decide to take on an Ironman, there is no faking training. Growing up I could have gone outside and done a 5k no problem no training. Ironman was different. It made me commit to pushing through pain every day. It made me commit to a two-year process. It made a kid who was scared of commitment (Need proof? Just ask any of my ex’s or girls I have talked to recently haha), dive into something that would challenge my limits. I had gone from April 28th, 2018, concluding my Ironman journey, to mid-October 2018 without a daily challenge to commit to.

I didn’t have something that needed my attention every day and it felt weird.

I stumbled across an article that talked about some whacko doing something like 5,000 pushups in one sitting or something like that. Uhhh what? Is that even possible? I started thinking about my trip to Europe when my guys and I would drop down and do pushups on the hour every hour from when we woke up to the mid-afternoon. We would do something like 150-200 pushups a day in random places like the Swiss Alps, or a train station in Germany. I have some video footage of pushups on some baller mountains in the Alps. We weren’t super consistent in getting them done because we had other priorities while on the trip. But this got me thinking. If I did pushups every day for a year, what would happen? What would be a goal that would be pretty difficult to reach, but with commitment, consistency and discipline would be something I could do? After some thinking, I decided that 100,000 pushups would be the goal. Not like the crazy guy in one sitting, but over the course of a year. 365 days, 100,000 pushups. That’s 274 pushups every day for one whole year. I thought about this to myself for a couple days. Was it something I could actually commit to? Ha, look at that fear of commitment hopping back up. If it was something I was going to decide to do, it was going to be something that I did.

No excuses, every day, for a year. 😳

I texted some guys about it and got some excited responses.

I’ve learned that you can’t really announce to the world that you are going to do something before you actually do it. You get a lot of the fulfillment from the reactions of people before you even do anything and you are a lot less likely to actually follow through with whatever it is.

These were people I trusted. Some said they would do it with me, which I was jazzed about. Training for Ironman alone sucked. I knew it would be way easier to do this with someone for accountability. So, I started. October 26th, 2018, I started doing 274 pushups a day. I quickly learned that your body starts to get used to a certain load if you repeat it over and over but the first couple of days were so hard. I was unbelievably sore after two days. The process started with 25 pushups on the hour every hour until I was done. It gave me a great excuse at work in my cubicle to stand up and move around for a little each hour. I committed to increasing the reps per set by 5 every 50 days. So, days 1-50 were 25 at a time. Days 51-100 were 30 at a time, days 301-350 were 55 at a time etc. Over time, I would be doing fewer sets in total, and more pushups at a time. This kept the process fresh enough that I wasn’t getting too bored.

Committing to this though was not easy at the beginning. I would forget about doing pushups throughout the day sometimes and would go to lay down for bed and suddenly remember and have to get up and grind out 200 pushups or something like that. It’s hard to fall asleep after doing a lot of pushups haha. I started to learn the more you can get done in the morning means less worrying in the evening. I started doing one set right when I woke up, then I would get back in bed and do my devotional and respond to the boys, and then get back on the floor and do another set.

But doing something for 365 consecutive days without missing a single day is incredibly hard.

There were days this last year I was sick. It didn’t matter. There were days I would row a raft 20 miles down the Arkansas river. Didn’t matter. There were days I had just carried a pretty heavy backpacking pack for several miles leading a trip in the Colorado backcountry. Didn’t matter. There were days I felt terrible because of too much of a certain drink from the night before. Didn’t matter. There were days I was working from 5am to 10pm. Didn’t matter. I have always been able to make excuses in the past for not doing something, but that’s what everyone does. There’s always a reason as to why someone won’t do something. I wasn’t going to let that be me. Committing to something means not wavering. This challenge has changed the way I commit to things. If I commit, there’s no stopping. I might take my time to commit, but when I do, it’s for good.

My home pastor from years ago, Matt Heard, said one time that there is ALWAYS time for things that are a priority.

This has stuck with me for a long time. If it is a priority, you’ll get it done. If it isn’t a true priority, well you get it.

There were four people I texted every single day for the last year to let them know I had finished the numbers for the day. Every day they got a text from me that read “Got em done”. They can back me up on the fact that I didn’t miss a single day because they are probably super annoyed to have been getting these texts every day. Although most times it was just a continuous stream of me texting them with the same text, every now and then I would get some encouragement from them and boy was it timely. Always positive, always encouraging me to keep going. Because I think they knew it was more than doing a physical challenge.

They knew I would learn something from this. And I sure did.

I learned more about discipline than ever. Most people see discipline as someone who wakes up early every day. Someone who goes to the gym every day. Someone who is consistent in their life. I think all of these things make up a part of discipline no doubt. But I also learned something else. It came from a book on the qualities they teach at West Point, one of which is discipline. Pat Williams in his book Character Carved in Stone talks about discipline, specifically self-discipline, like this.

“Self-disciplined people put miles of distance between themselves and temptation. They don’t put themselves at risk. They don’t flirt with temptation. They flee it­ - repeatedly, habitually, without fail.”

As much as discipline is being consistent in a routine, going to the gym, how you talk, etc., it is even more so your response to temptation. It’s a response to your situation.

Disciplined people flee temptation always. Period.

I am more proud to have learned this lesson than to have done a lot of pushups. It took this challenge though for God to teach this to me. He continues to shape me in ways I don’t see coming and I am so thankful for it. He is preparing me for his plan, for where he has me going after grad school, for a relationship, for a heart ready to serve others and to be a more disciplined person.

Do I still have a long way to go? Absolutely. I fall short every day. I am so thankful for the grace that God has given me and offers to you. If you read my Ironman blog, you know that I think everyone should challenge themselves in some way each year. I am not a big new year’s resolution kind of guy, but if it’s that that will get you doing something hard, then do it. Why not start now though? We are capable of so much as humans and it takes something hard to push us closer to those limits. If there are limits.

Am I going to stop doing pushups now that this is over? Hell ya. I am so sick of thinking about pushups every freaking day. 100,000 pushups are more than most people will do in their life. I am kind of over them to be honest. But this was just the challenge for this year. I will be looking for something for 2020 and it won’t be easy. It doesn’t have to be physical, but it will be a challenge and I am so stoked for it.

I am more stoked for what God teaches me through whatever it is.

Thanks for reading fam. I hope you learned something today. I love you!