What 500 reps of anything (daily reps) REALLY build.
- Gumption and SPIRIT!

This afternoon, the sun was nice and warm – as opposed to the freezing cold nights (when I take freezing cold showers, hehe – it was funny, my wife was hollering about (when my daughter asked if she took cold showers) “I’m not a damn wrestler!!!” Hehe) – and I was out there doing my 500 pushups as usual.

Towards the end of the workout, I was really flagging today.

I still remember the girls next to me (office workers out on their lunch break) looking at me grunting each rep out curiously as if to say “wtf is going on”.

Thats ok, ladies, I wanted to say. One of them is actually rather cute!

But, training time is training time, unless the girls are training WITH you – like a certain Carol did, nothing doing. No nonsense of looking at the flowers when climbing hills with me, hehe. (unless it’s post workout when I’ll look at a lot more).

Anyway.

Chick might have been surprised if she knew 250 club swings preceded this – today with 15 kg’s ers – and if she knew a 100 squats and a brisk run were part of the proceedings.

But the 500 pushups take center stage … and I’m here to tell you this – apart from the obvious conditioning, strength, and other immense benefits these workouts give you  they build one thing above all – focus, gumption, SPIRIT – and mental strength in hades – sorry, spades. Hehe.

Really, when you can knock out 500 reps of any exercise consistently, you’ll find you’ll focus like a laser on, and move towards whatever goal you’ve set for yourself in life as well -any sphere of it.

It might surprise you to know I dont necessarily think about my other goals during a workout.

I did in the past, now, my workouts are so damn tough – and so it should be – that its about getting through this set, and planning for the next, thats all that matters. It’s also a great way to get the subconscious mind to work on the other goals in the background while I “forget about them” temporarily.

Why 500, you might ask?

Good question.

Why not 400 – or 600?

Or 1000?

I dont know, but 500 is a number that has been passed down through the ages, as with most such things, for good reason, it’s a number that really hits it workout wise.

You hear a lot of nuts bitch about high rep workouts claiming they dont build strength – or muscle – some claim “they just build stamina” – some have even gone so far as to claim they’re boring (though admittedly guys who use that word have never ever done it themselves – or they wouldn’t be using that word) – and so forth.

Boring?

Man, pushing yourself when you’re already at your limit is anything but boring – and that brings me to my next point.

Key thing with these workouts – keep them CHALLENGING.

For instance, the only “easy” – or relatively easy exercise (for me, that is) that I do during my 500 pushup workouts are floor humpers, even those I’ll try and make each rep tougher – and I’m doing them on one arm now, something that has eluded me for most of my life!

Pretty soon, it will be one arm fingertip pushups – talk about a SIZZLER!

Anyway, if all I did for the most part during my workouts were Hindu pushups and table pushups – which was what I focused upon for years when I wrote 0 Excuses Fitness – then it would be easy for me.

Now, nothing doing.

I’ll do 20-30 reps of either the Jack La Lanne pushup or the fingertip (regular) for my high rep pushups, but thats it – most of the other reps are sets of 10-15, for me low reps, and TOUGH exercises – exercises that I have to really work to finish that many reps.

Thats how to do it, my friend.   (not to mention, older guys with joint issues and such – once you increase the difficulty of the sets, and lower the reps/set while keeping TOTAL reps / workout the same – THAT is the ticket for keeping them joints healthy!)

This sometimes also means that the hour I set aside for 500 pushups – well, that sometimes gets extended a bit if I do a LOT of the lower rep movements to get there. So be it. The key is to keep it challenging, and the body to be forced to adapt, and thats how it works my friend.

And anyone that tells you high rep workouts are useless, well …

A short story first.

An idiot in my daughter’s school today claimed something that made me goggle when the daughter told me.

“Aryan said he’ll take all my father’s money!”

Apparently there was some stupid debate about who has the latest version of playstation (I’m not ashamed to admit I did not even know version 5 is out!) – and my daughter didnt have it, so according to nutter kid, “she’s poor”.

I laughed.

Anyone that spouts nonsense like that is in category three, I told my daughter, who asked what I meant by that.

I told her you can roughly classify people you meet into three categories “smart” (those who you should listen to, maybe learn from), “normal” (herd) and the last, “utter bozos”.

After the giggles subsided (she loves the word bozo, hehe) – I told her to simply ignore such foolishness.

The greatest riches are HERE –  I pointed to the ole noggin.

And it’s true – with a BRAIN, and if you USE it the way it was meant to, you can ultimately attract all the riches you want to yourself my friend. (and I told my daughter this too).

Anyway – – the daughter replied with something interesting.

“He has a huge club with which he’ll smash your head!”

Something about being “proud” as well … of me, or I dont know, the wife said that while not being too happy about the language my daughter used.

Truly a chip off the old block, I was going to say, but she cut me off saying “well, I’ll be the one listening to the teachers bitch about in the Parents Teacher Meetings!”

Well, those teachers do precious little other than maintain their makeup in class – not like they actually TEACH? Anyway, I didnt say that …

… but back to the 500 rep workouts, and people that diss them, call them useless or other things and plenty of people do – put them STRAIGHT in Bozo category, dont even bother talking or arguing to these fools, it ain’t worth it.

Anyway …

Here’s a tougher variant on the archer pushups that will really smoke your triceps, another step on the royal road to one arm pushups for reps…

And thats that.

Remember – Pushup Central, my friend – GET the book if you haven’t already – I cannot emphasize how important this book is to your overall fitness goals, no matter what they are, period.

And thats that – I’ll be back soon.

Best,

Rahul Mookerjee

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