So, there’s a thread over in the Lounge forum at Ars Technica about the 100 Pushup Challenge. The program prepares you to do one hundred pushups in a row — starting with 0 at week one, and ending up with 100 on week six. I just finished my second tour of duty with Tony Horton’s Beach Body Power Half Hour and was looking for something to do.

I’m in — one hundred pushups or bust.

The first thing you do is see how many pushups you can do at once. You’re supposed to do this initial test a few days before beginning the program, so I did it last Friday. I sandbagged a little and cranked out forty. It’s going to sound bitch, but I am motivated by improvement and wanted room to grow, even if it was a little cheap at first. Forty pushups put me along the advanced track, and I jumped right in to the hardest column during week three.

You do three days of pushups a week. I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do officially during your “off” days, but I am going to do abs and some stretch / yoga work.

Here’s my first day:

Set 1 14
Set 2 14
Set 3 18
Set 4 14
Set 5 Max out (at least twenty): I did 20 ;)

You rest for sixty seconds between sets.

At first I was shouting praises to Tony Horton; I blasted through sets one and two with nary a burn in my arms. I felt a little tired after the end of set three. By the end of set four I was relying on my tested method of hating myself to get through the last four. One of the fastest 60 seconds of my life flew by and I was on to set five. Yeah. That sucked.

To the credit of the work I’ve been doing so far, my arms felt fine again about twenty minutes later. I’m a little concerned that this won’t be enough to keep me in shape for another three weeks. So there’s the tricky part: how do I keep the ball rolling with a P90 fitness plan while still saving my arms for the Pushup Challenge? Another reason I was happy to do the challenge was that it gave my legs some time off. I can do a day of abs, a day of stretching, but I don’t think either are going to do much for my heart rate.

The other P90 workouts might be a little too much leg work for me. Maybe I’ll give Hawaii another try. ;)