Push Ups Journey

Entered Visa Singapore Level 4 Work from Home setup back in mid March, 2020 with weak arms and core. With all the fitness gyms closed and residents were given stay-at-home order during the Singapore's Circuit Breaker, I needed to be creative and remain active. 

During one of my HIIT workout at home, I tried to do one full pushup where I can barely push myself back up. I realised there's no way for me to execute this properly with weak upper body strength. So I kept myself motivated by doing easy versions of it as progression to proper pushup. Somehow you need to trick your brain by accomplishing smaller rocks to keep you pumped up for the bigger ones. My breakthrough plan: from girl or knee pushups to lay down pushups and eventually the full version of it. 

It also helps to keep a record of your workout and to take a video of your body form for evaluation and improvement. By the end of March, twelve days since our company advised us to work from home, I made 490 pushups combination of knee and lay down pushups. Come whole month of April, I completed 575 pushups, good portion of it in full form pushup but in weaker form. As it took me at least 40 seconds to one minute to complete ten full pushups. By May, Im feeling more confident with my pushups and this is when I started to noticed my form had a huge improvement compared to past month. This time I am able to complete 10 proper pushups in 30 seconds. I even pushed myself by doing the one-minute pushup challenge, where you will make as many pushups as you can in a minute. My personal best was 24 proper pushups in one minute. This gave me a record of almost 1400 total pushups in two and a half months.

My journey to proper pushups in good form took me at least two months of hard work, discipline and practice. Not to mention the body ache and recovery period. Yes it was exhausting, painful and dragging but 'twas all worth it.

You can also visit my Instagram post to see more video progression to proper pushup.

Keep on pushing!