The Levers: Push Up Challenge

As previously mentioned in earlier posts, I attend a boot camp class 3 or 4 days a week. The owner of the boot camp coordinated a Push Ups for Charity Challenge to raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project. In preparation for the challenge, almost all of our workouts over the past several weeks have included at least some push ups. I do not consider myself to be a weakling nor do I have any delusions that I am some sort of female Hercules. I can do squats and leg presses for hours but have never had much upper body strength. So while I don't despise push ups, I don't really love them either. The challenge was optional but since it was for a good cause I decided to sign up and then commenced pestering my friends and family for donations.

The way the challenge works is people can sponsor you by either donating a flat fee or they can donate a certain amount for each push up. I included in my donation plea to friends and family that my goal for the 90 seconds was to do 40 push ups. Remember, I am a girl, and I have very little arm strength. I knew that I would not be able to complete the entire 90 seconds doing military style push ups so my stated goal of 40 was meant to imply that some of those push ups would be the girly kind. Some of you may think this is cheating and that is fine. However, before you make fun of me, get on the floor, set your timer for 90 seconds and see how many girl push ups you can do with correct form. If you are a girl and you can do way more than 40 then you have earned your right to mock me. If you are a boy and you do way more than 40 girl push ups, well, you are a boy. You should be able to do that.

Anyway, one of my sponsors (we'll call him "Charles") made a complicated donation with a very generous bonus for reaching the 40 mark and an additional bonus for each push up over 40. Charles' donation came complete with weeks worth of friendly trash talk leading up to the event and plenty of complaining that I had "tricked" him by not originally telling him about the girl push ups.

About a week before the challenge I asked Myers if he would like to participate. He said he would, but that he hadn't been doing push ups as a regular part of his workouts and didn't know how well he would do.

Finally the day of the event arrived and I was happy to see so many people participating. It was the average Joes vs. the Coppell Fire Department vs. the Coppell Police Department. In order to make it as fair as possible the rules stated that you had to lower yourself until your chest touched a sponge placed on the ground below you and that when you can up you had to lock out your elbows. I am proud to say that Myers and I were 2 of the few that actually followed the rules. Most of the cops and firemen were doing fast mini push ups (still impressive) instead of coming all the way up. There were about 6 rounds of participants and it was funny to see everyone get completely pooped after about 50 seconds. Myers and I were no exception. We both started out strong and did really well for almost a minute and then our arms gave out. We both managed to irk out a few more push ups in the last 30 seconds but afterward we agreed that we could not have done 1 more push up if our lives depended on it.

I ended up doing 50 push ups which meant Charles had to fork over his original pledge for the first 40 plus all of the bonuses for surpassing my goal. Yay! He came out to the event to cheer us on (or psych us out, not sure which) but showed up about 2 minutes after we finished. I am grateful that I had such great sponsors and was able to help raise money for wounded soldiers. I was also proud that my weak arms were able to struggle through and do 50 push ups, even though I was pretty sore for the next several hours.

Myers who, if you remember, had not prepared at all for the challenge ended up doing 67 push ups in 90 seconds. I was very proud of him...and also a little jealous.