A little over a year ago, I had a scare. The vision in one eye went blurry for a while. I posted it on social media, and a number of my friends were worried that I’d had a stroke. It turned out to be more likely low blood sugar, but the idea of a stroke motivated me to upgrade my daily (or so) 2 hour workout to include 100 push-ups. And I worked up to it over the next few months, first with partial push-ups to about 6 inches from chest to ground, working all the way down to where the base of my rib cage touched ground. If I couldn’t finish a set, I had to do them “girl-style” on my knees.
It worked pretty well. I got better at it. But sometimes I just didn’t feel like doing them, and didn’t. Too hungry (I also intermittent fast, usually 19/5 or 20/4) or too tired, or whatever excuse. And when I skipped one day, it was all the more easy to skip the next. I had to come up with a motivational gimmick.
So, as you see in the image above, on February 25 I decided to make my food and incidentals budget of $10/day dependent on completing my push-ups: 10 cents for each I completed, and 2 cents for “girl” push-ups. But the kicker: -10 cents for each one I skip. If I do 50 and stop? Zero for the day. Skip a day? My entire $10 food budget has to go to investment instead.
As it continues, I get less attached to how the “meat machine” performs. I used to worry if I could finish out a set. I still do, a little, but as time goes on it gets easier to just observe, detached. “Can it get at least the first 15? If so, maybe it can do the last 10 in groups of 2.” Almost always, it does better than I expected of it. Without checking, I’m pretty sure I haven’t done less than 75 full push-ups over a 20-minute period.
This may or may not work for anybody else. Let me know if it works for you, and if I get enough positive feedback, I might polish this up and post to Best Practices.