Shojiro Koyama was an immigrant in my night class. We became friends and he showed me some things about his field of martial arts, karate specifically. One part of that I had doubts about was his push-ups; they seemed shallow and floppy or loose. Whenever I did push-ups, I kept my body rigid and tight and many years later (Koyama went on to a long tenure in the PE Dept. at ASU as a karate instructor) I got up to 40 push-ups my way. Decades late my buddy watched me do some and noted I didn’t have a full range of motion, i.e. all the way up and all the way down. Then just in 2024 watched me do them and exclaimed, “Those aren’t Marine Corps push-ups.” He noted in particular, again, the failure to reach full range of motion. I went back home and did that and dropped from 40 to 7! Later I asked my grandson about my push-ups – he had just got out of the Marine Corps – and he said I needed to keep my head up. I had reached over 20 push-ups by then but when I kept my head up the number dropped to 12. Now I am back up to well over 20….. vide infra.
I needed aerobic exercise and foud that the Full Body workout I’d done earlier fit the bill and didn’t take long. But I recalled it as being quite strenuous and perhaps something I wasn’t prepared for. I had done the whole workout without weights a few months earlier and knew it could work well as an aerobic addition to my otherwise anaerobic workouts. BUT, I decided I should start slow so each of the five exercises had incremental reps, going from 20 to 100 in steps of 20, 40, 60, 80 100, so I decided no weights and to do only a quarter of the reps, i.e. 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25. The exercises were supposedly graded from first the hardest to the last the easiest. Not so. The last was push-ups!
But I started at the quarter mark of reps and then added one rep each day, doing my best to carry out the program every day. I didn’t make that exactly but I am not aiming at 19 for the first one and finishing at 20 in 2 days, then backing off the 5 but with weights. A similar trajectory with each exercise should get me to doing the whole program with weights, 5 pound dumbbells, and then restart with increased weight. It makes me feel very good.
One time at the gym I got 24 push-ups but normally 22. With this program I am at 28!