pushing up
the numbers
I am not normally a fan of numbering everything. Humans invented numbers a long time ago—or discovered that they were already there, depending on your point of view1—and have based much of their existence on using numbers to build things and make stuff work, and moving them about a bit to pay for those things and stuff.
Of course, the majority of life on Earth has no idea what is going on with the mathematics of their own existence, and have been working successfully at just being themselves and doing their own thing for far, far longer than humanity has been around messing about with digits.
Personally, I have left the idea of having too many things in my life quantified and measured behind, especially since retiring hurt from a long sales career where numbers obviously meant everything. Particularly in the pay packet. However, I do need them in my fitness endeavours. Otherwise, how can I tell if I am getting slowly fitter, rather than slowly more unfit, unless there are some parameters I can measure and quantify it all by?
So the numbers I often look at are my weight, the power I can generate in Watts, and my heart rate in beats per minute. Sometimes I cast a semi-interested eye over all the other numbers that the combination of my Wahoo Kickr trainer and my Garmin cycle computer seem to be capable of showing me, but I mostly don't have a scooby what they mean.
I also do other body weight, no-equipment indoor exercise routines, to help me develop and strengthen some areas that my cycling alone doesn't particularly address. Core strength is an area which has benefits on the bike, but as a cyclist I've always had relatively weak upper body development.
Everything really is core, legs, lungs and heart normally, and that's pretty much where I've concentrated on and been relatively strong for years, despite a stroke and having MS.
a coincidence
I came across a recent blog post (which I didn't save and can't find now of course) which mentioned another blog where the author had embarked on a personal fitness 'journey'.
I have found that one, so you can read it here if you like - 10,000 Pushups And Other Silly Exercise Quests That Changed My Life
This was putting together two of the things that I haven't previously been particularly interested in. Upper body exercises and recording numbers. This did not look like it should appeal to me. Normally.
But something clicked about it this time. I wondered about it. I remembered how important the concept of the 10,000 number is in Taoism, another interest of mine. It just seemed to be one of those serendipitous coincidences I like so much. And I knew my upper body, my arms and shoulders, could do with some work to get them caught up with the rest of me.
But although I had been incorporating some pushups into my exercise routines for a few months now, doing 10,000 in a year sounded like a pretty big number, as numbers go.
the doing
Being a fan of breaking tasks down into many smaller tasks to make them easier to understand and to do (and easier to lose a few), I did the maths (UK, we have spare s's).
How many would that be per day over the year?
Well, 27.397260273973 of course!
Let's say 28 to friends, and you.
Given that my routine—which I was doing every other day during the week as it stood now—incorporated twenty pushups, this looked like something that was not as unattainable as it first seemed. Although I struggled to even do one pushup properly two or three months ago (I am not joking about pretty much ignoring upper body strength before!)
Except that now, instead of three times a week, it would be seven times a week. Unless perhaps I increased the rate somehow. (Somehow = do more pushups per day than 28 rate = get occasional day off.)
Or, if the 10,000 pushups blog post was to be believed, the target might be achieved earlier through improvements in fitness making it possible to do many more pushups per session than just 28. Some sort of target beating psychosis might yet set in, motivating me to get as much of the 10,000 done as quickly as I could. So I might have spurts of enthusiasm and go mad with it.
But all I definitely HAD to do to get there numerically was 28 per day.
I decided to attempt it.
the current doing
I created a spreadsheet to track my efforts. A fucking spreadsheet! Me! I've never clicked on the spreadsheet icon on the computer before. That was a program for accountants or professional people or something. But it seemed the best way to add things up as I went.
Anyway, I can tell you now (16th October 2025) that I have been doing this for eleven days so far, which according to my complicated formula (11 x 28) should be at least 308 pushups.
I'm actually on 387. Although I started on getting to 30 in two bites (20, rest, another 10) every morning, generally I'm doing 40 at the moment. I think I could do more if I did a few in the evenings as well as my normal pre-breakfast exercise routines time, but I don't have to. I'm ahead of the game already, in front of the required run-rate, developing a small cushion for the inevitable "Bollocks to it" and MS bleurgh days.
So I have a thing to track, numerically. A target. A number to keep me heading towards and to make me afraid to miss. It was nearly twenty years ago now that I last worried too much about targets (although I was never that bothered about them really).
And I'm telling you all about it now, with the aim being to occasionally bring it up and tell you how I'm doing. I think they call that 'accountability'.
I bet you can't wait for that!
 
NB: Incidentally, when I were a lad in darkest SW England, a pushup was called a press-up. I've left it as pushups here as it doesn't really matter that much, and I haven't been anywhere near a gym to find out if we still call them press-ups here since the 1980's.
Written by a real person, em dashes and all.
post link for sharing: https://skryblans.com/pushing-up
If you liked this post, click on the star below. It's alright, nothing bad will happen to you. Promise.
Do you want to read more about the question of numbers? Really? Here's an article↩