Now as most people in my situation, three young kids under the age of five, IT job, home renovations, keeping fit hasn’t always been number one on the priority list, and I am no longer in the shape i once was.

Being in IT, means long hours in front of a computer screen, followed by ( in my case ) a one hour commute in each direction.  Not exactly conducive to staying in shape, is it.

When I get home, I want to enjoy some time with my 3 boys, and my wife before the kids head to bed.  Once they are in bed, there are the usual household things that need to get done, dishes, cleaning, laundry, etc.  Once this is all done, well I really don’t have much motivation to head out to a gym, especially since most of the gyms around my place suffer from what i like to call, the social gym circle.  This is what I call the people who just go to the gym to talk, socialize, flirt, you name it while sitting on some machine or just taking up space.  So if gym’s are out, what are my options, running, which I enjoy, when the weather permits, home gym, we aren’t really setup for that.

A while back, a colleague, well former colleague actually, started talking about a program called one hundred pushups that he had just completed.  The premise of this is that you train up to be able to do 100 consecutive push ups without stopping.  Push ups are an extremely good exercise ( if done well ) as they work shoulders, chest, arms, abs, back and legs.  The focus is to perform “good form” push ups, in sets and increase the amount every day ( 3 times a week ) until you can accomplish the magic number.

I started the program on February 18, only managing 13 good form push ups before my form began to falter.  On Thursday night, March 31st, was the second “test”, after completing week 4, I completed 44 good form push ups.  Now I haven’t completed the 100, but already I can already feel the difference.  I am actually enjoying this training, as it takes no more than a couple minutes in the evening after everything else is done.  I know it’s not a full workout, but it is a beginning.  and once that base is established, I can/will be able to move on to other exercises.