I once read that after the age of 30, you can lose as much as 10% of your muscle mass per year.
I don't know if that's true or not.
I suspect it's more of a scare statistic.
What I do know is that at the beginning of October I was surprised to find that I could only do 2 pushups without stopping.
I've never been into fitness nor particularly worried about becoming strong, but this seemed like a problem I should fix.
About 6 weeks later, I am able to do 120 pushups a day.
I did it using a technique I learned from a Tai Chi master (actually, he's been inducted into the Martial Arts Hall of Fame three times).
By the end of this post, you'll know exactly how I did it, but first, a little theory.
Photo by Mark Hang Fung So on Unsplash
Al Simon teaches his students that you should exercise at 70% of your max, and if you have an injury at only 30%.
To be honest, learning this as a young person, I didn't think too much of it.
I could push myself hard and my body just bounced right back.
With age and experience, the wisdom of this advice becomes increasingly clear.
It's possible to develop faster (and much more enjoyable) without pain.
Upon discovering that I could only do 2 pushups, I immediately started to think about the problem as Al would.
I thought about all the different kind of pushups I know about.
The following list orders them from roughly easiest to most difficult.
- knee pushups (easiest)
- regular pushups
- incline pushups
- Spiderman pushups (bringing knee to elbow in the down position, alternating sides)
- extension pushups (twist body and lift hand toward the ceiling in the up position, alternating sides)
- one-arm pushups (hardest)
I decided to try to climb the tree.
Starting with knee pushups, I found I could do maximum 7.
For the next 7 days, I set aside 1 hour and every 10 minutes did 5 knee pushups for 30 pushups.
The next week's max was 9, so I did 6 knee pushups every 10 minutes for a week.
The week after, I was doing 7 knee pushups.
It's important to note that at no time did I push to exhaustion, or failure.
I kept everything within my 70% limit.
The challenge of the first three weeks was the psychological challenge of being patient with how slow the progress seemed.
Photo by Lopez Robin on Unsplash
Then the magic started.
The knee pushups started to feel too easy, so I started doing regular pushups.
I also expanded my exercise period beyond 1 hour, continuing with 10-minute breaks in between.
Within 2 weeks my capacity went from 5 regular pushups to 10.
Yet, I wasn't killing myself.
This week I've been doing 10 sets of 12 pushups for 120 pushups a day.
And the best part, in my opinion, is that I don't go to bed sore nor ache the next day.
Always remember that if you have physical impairments of any kind to talk with your doctor before starting a new exercise.
Making a situation worse with enthusiasm or ignorance of the consequences doesn't serve you.