I came across a personal fitness and exercise site named 100 Push Ups, which is about what it suggests – being able to do 100 push ups in a row.

Over the weekend I went through the initial test, which is to guage what your current fitness level is. The test is very straight foward, do as many consecutive good form push ups as you can in one session until you can’t push another one out. That number is used to place yourself into the fitness training program. I managed to get through 30 push ups in my initial test, which puts me into week three of the training schedule.

It wasn’t until I started reading through how the fitness program is structured to build strength that I realised that I was in for a bit of a shock. While at the gym, I’d normally do weights in sets of three with between 10-15 repetitions per set. At week three in the push up challenge, the sets start at 14 and go up from there.

As a matter of curiosity, a few months ago I thought it’d be useful to know how much weight I lift when doing a simple push up and it was approximately 55kg or slightly over 50% of my body weight. With that number in mind, I knew getting through the 100 push up challenge was going to be just that – a challenge and not something that I’d casually stroll through.

In the coming weeks, I’ll report back on how my progress is going on the challenge. I don’t expect it to be easy but I’m hoping that I build my arm strength up in a hurry, as by the end of next week the exercise program is expecting me to do 160 push ups over five sets with two minutes break between each set !