A One Month Experiment in Physical Exercise

I dropped below 160 lbs. I was getting mega weak and lame. After my marathon I really stopped a lot of my exercising. I bought a Gymnastic Strength Training Course but I wanted more.

I remembered a Tim Ferriss podcast with Pavel Tsastouline where he talks about 'grease to groove' and Joe Rogan echoes the same faith in this tactic. It is all about consistency and not "working out' but "training''.

I had done a hand grip grease-to-groove on my roadtrip which produced satisfying results, but that was easier because I could affect the resistance of the grip device. Push-ups are different.

Regardless, I wanted to try a different regiment instead of going to the gym for an hour and a half three or four time a week. I decided I was going to do five perfect pushups, and two pistol squats every hour from 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. I couldn't really do full pistol squats so I had to modify it hour-to-hour based on my capability.

Ten days in. I can do a pretty dang confident pistol squat on each leg. My glutes are sore (which is something that has always been traditionally weak). My pushups feel powerful now. Initially the pushups had felt weak, but that turned around quickly.

People think it's weird, and I feel weird randomly breaking out into a quick exercise.

Eleven days in I decided to continue to do five pushups, but to control my decent on them.

Two weeks in, I can drop easy (if not already tired) and bust out a pistol squat on each leg. I have a little trouble with my right still. I can feel hamstring tightness which might be the reason for me falling back sometimes on the right side pistol squat. Push-ups are so much easier to break out than when I started.

What can be difficult is postponing it sometimes by a half hour or hour, and then trying to pick up the slack later. Many times, especially at work, I'm just busy helping someone or in the process of doing something else.

It is getting tough to remember or drop down right at the hour. I've had to double up the last few days on hours.

Day 21, sore, push ups feel great, pistol squats are stalling. I really enjoy this. I'm kind of hoping it doesn't stop. At the end I'm going to see how many pushups I can do in a row. I find it pretty easy to sneak away a lot of times actually.

Day 25, I miss the top of the hour a lot. I'm doing multiple sets in the hours that I have time now. Usually a set well after 7:00 P.M. to make up for one missed earlier.

With two days left in the month I'm at crossroads of whether to continue my daily workouts. It has been a burden a lot of time. Socially it is an inconvenience, at work I'm busy sometimes. However, my pushups have got a lot better and are powerful. It also doubles as a core workout. I can bust out a pistol on command, I am feeling quite sore today thought, and I'm not sure why.

Conclusion

I'm not going to continue the practice through May, however I'm glad that I did this.

It's a little too stressful to keep up with. I'm going to try to go to the gym every day for a month and hopefully build on this base that I have created in April. I feel physically stronger, and at the least, it has given me more confidence and a reason to continue some sort of consistency.

This has lasted the month of April. In total I have done 1,950 push ups, and 780 pistol squats. That's a helluva lot more than I had done in any month in at least the last year.