xerosphere

Hardest day yet. Not that the sets were that difficult, I just had a really strong urge to quit halfway, but somehow mustered up the juice to finish. I’ve been on the middle column throughout the whole program, but moved to the left column at week 6 based on the exhaustion test. Pretty sure that I’m going to repeat week 6 two more times, once in the middle column, then once in the right column, and then I’ll be able to do 100.

I’ve been doing the workouts every other day, and that works fine for me. It seems that when it’s time for an exhaustion test, the interruption of the every other day workout schedule makes me lose ground, since the test isn’t nearly as much work as a workout.

Pretty amazing so far. I’ve been on the middle column and have really enjoyed the benefits of the program. Really feeling the difference in core strength. I’ve been doing every other day rather than M W F, it just seems to work better for me. The couple times that I’ve taken an extra rest day (new years day hangover & sore abs once) it has been extra difficult to get back into it.

At the beginning I could only do ten pushups, that’s kind of sad. I’m now up to 46 in one set. That’s a BIG improvement. I really feel the strength difference and am definitely seeing a little more definition in my arms, shoulders and pecs.

I know the next couple weeks are going to be difficult, I’m about to hit the first day of 8 sets w/45 second rest interval tomorrow, that seems like it’s going to be brutal, but I’m up for it.

I did repeat week 4, and that was a smart move, I’m totally confident that I’ll be able to finish up the rest of the program (but not opposed to repeating week 5 if need be..)

Definitely worth doing & pretty easy to stick to. Things that make this really work for me:

- each workout is pretty short
- can just do it at home with no equipment
- highly structured
- the realization of steady incremental improvement (at end of each workout i can do a few more pushups than i could last time)
- there’s a plan b if things don’t work out (i.e. usually i’d just quit if i failed, but the instructions to repeat a week if things get too difficult are right on the money)

(referring to http://hundredpushups.com program, in case that was unclear)

and i was considering stopping at 10, but now i’m thinking about going a couple more days. honestly, i’m feeling so good that i feel like i could do it indefinitely.

as always, i am amazed at the unexpected lessons learned. how many times over the last week have i absent-mindedly walked into the kitchen and scanned the pantry out of boredom? were i not on cleanse, i would have eaten something; not because i needed it or really even wanted it, but because there was nothing to do in that moment. how many of us do that daily? several times a day? the almost constant desire to be occupied usually translates into consuming something, be it food, drink, cigarettes, television, music, someone’s attention, websurfing or whatever else pervades our lives. it takes something like the master cleanse to shake things up, wake things up and become mindful, to remind me to exercise some of that good free will we are all blessed with and make all my actions truly deliberate. can i just happily “be”? just for a few minutes?

glad to remind myself that the answer is yes.