10,000 push ups progress - October 2025
the story so far...
I read this post -
10,000 Pushups And Other Silly Exercise Quests That Changed My Life
by WJ Gilmore
and I decided to try for 10,000 push ups in a year myself.
October 2025
It would have been neater if I'd started this thing on the first of the month, but I didn't read the post and decide to try it myself until the 5th, so I started mine on the 6th.
As you may have seen in my initial post, I worked out my target as getting at least 28 push ups done per day, so in the 25 days left of October, I should be reporting at least 700 achieved to be on schedule.
I am a little ahead of that.
I do my daily push ups routine as the first thing I need to do in the morning, after preparing my breakfast and a pot of coffee. I don't allow myself to sit down to actually eat the breakfast or drink the coffee, or even turn on the computer to start doing anything else, until the exercises are done. It's the only way, otherwise my ADHD brain will be lost to endless distractions and may never come back.
Establish habits and routines. Very important.
You may remember I have also been doing some core exercises, usually including leg raises, crunches, dead bugs and planks. I limit those to an 'every other day' schedule. The push ups are every day, and every other day I add the ones for the core areas.
I started out by trying to get to 30 push ups, and I did it in batches. Fifteen, rest, ten, rest, five, collapse (with arms and shoulders pumped out).
Mentally I could already feel like I was gaining, because I had the 28 per day figure in my head, so I knew I was inching ahead of the schedule by managing thirty. Yes, just by two, but more equalled better. And, given my total lack of any upper body strength just a few months before, it was a little reward-centre pleasing success in my brain to get that far.
Gold star, have a chocolate biscuit. (No don't have the biscuit! We're on a health kick here!)
Then I started adding just a few more to each batch. Because I must have liked the pain or something. Could I get up to twenty in the first set? Answer, yes, gradually—and definitely easier when I remembered to breathe while I was doing them! Soon the total for the three morning sets was 32... 35... then 40 total.
And what if I could do a quick ten push ups when I went upstairs to get changed into my pyjamas for the evening wind-down in front of the TV? That would help, if whatever I'd been doing physically that day would allow me.
I started on just sets of 15, 10 and 5 in the morning. Now sometimes, if I'm feeling really good (twice so far), it's 23,16,11.
I do have to be careful though. Don't get too keen.
Firstly, an MS episode can be kicked off if I get physically over-fatigued. Secondly, I'm still under treatment for atrial fibrillation with beta blockers. They're meant to stop my heart getting too over excited, so pushing too hard against what they're trying to do is... not totally wise.
Given that I'm also doing core exercises, and trying to get at least 100-150 kilometres of cycling done per week too, I should try to keep an eye on my physical tiredness levels. Forty push ups per day would be fine really, but I suspect I'll still try to exceed the nominal daily target. That's just the way I am. But that may carry a price yet.
At the end of October my push up total stands at
(insert dramatic tension-inducing pause here)
(wait for it)
1,117
The 10,000 is looking more than achievable. The most difficult thing really is me maintaining the desire to carry on with it. I know I'm going to get a lull in motivation at some stage, and probably try to convince myself that I've already proved I could do it, so I don't really have to do it.
This will happen at some stage. Or I get a contrary don't wanna blip and take a month off for whisky, women and song (I don't like wine).
Hope not though. Yes, it's an arbitrary number over an arbitrary time span, but it's also already a physically beneficial challenge.
8,883 to go.
Written by a real person, em dashes and all.
post link for sharing: https://skryblans.com/10000-push-ups-progress-october-2025
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