Monday, August 18, 2008

I call a Mulligan!

All right, all of you exercisers out there. I've been doing the 100 pushups program, and I'm at the end of the fourth week. Of course, it's gotten progressively harder. At first, my upper arms and chest hurt. Now they're feeling strong, but my stomach is getting sharp pains as I near the end of my pushups. Why? Am I holding myself wrong? Why in the WORLD would I be getting stomach muscle pains when doing pushups? Grrr.

Anyway, the fourth week doesn't look hard on paper, but it really kind of is. I can now do 25 pushups straight, which makes me happy, but next week is supposed to be another big jump, like Week Three. Or you can redo Week Four if you need to, before going on. I say, MULLIGAN. My husband and I are redoing Week Four, and will finish the six week program a week late. Still, when you do the entire set for Week Four's third day, you are doing at least 104 pushups! Cool! Now I need a sit-ups program - even though I haven't successfully done a sit-up since my third Cesarean - and I'll be happy. I can't say that my arms have appreciably changed, though, so I don't know that this "before and after contest" will be showing pictures of huge contrasts in musculature. Maybe I could take pictures like they do in the skin-care ads, and slightly change how I'm standing, or the angle of the shot, to make my arms look more ferocious. Yeah....

6 comments:

Bunny Queen said...

I'm just finishing week 3, and I noticed the stomach muscles too. I think, in my case at least, it's due to the effort of holding my shoulders and hips in line with each other so that I am not using my legs or stomach to actually do the push up.

As for the difference in how my arms look... They don't really look different, but when I started everything on my lower arm was loose and floppy (isn't that attractive sounding) and now it is much more solidly muscle. I just figure it's like the scale not changing even though you drop a pant size or two - muscle weighs more than fat. :)

Marlene said...

I was too wimpy to participate, (even though I work out regularly at the gym) but I've been following your progress. Your stomach pain is likely the core muscles kicking in to support your body in the correct position. And that's a good thing right?

Anonymous said...

I agree w/Marlene, it's more than likely it's your stomach muscles helping out. You can't really avoid using them. I say, add crunches! WTH, right?

You know that push ups are really a chest exercise and that the arm muscles are secondary, similar to your core muscles, right?

Cheryl S. said...

I want to call a Mulligan too. This was the last day of the 4th week for me, and I just couldn't finish it. I blame it on:

A) A much harder week 4!!!

B) A colonoscopy (good reason, right? Something had to be good about it.)

C) Margene made me get up waaaay to early this morning because she picked me up after getting Kim at the airport, so that we could go out and have fun with the visiting Norma all day, and then later go out for dinner with Susan, who got us all drunk.

Anonymous said...

Look at you, I am so impressed! I really wish I'd signed up when you first started, but I was still in lazy mode then, lol. Even if you can't see all the differences, it's obvious you're getting stronger.

Jennifer said...

I'm at the start of week 4, and holy moly are my arms tired at the end of the workouts. I'm shocked how many more push-ups I can do however. I haven't had the tummy pains, but they may come at the end of the week.