The 100-100-100 challenge
I did 100 pull-ups, 100 pushups for 100 days.
Boy did it work.
Why would I do such thing? - you might ask.
Well, let me give you the backstory.
When I was a kid, I used to do flat-water kayaking. It's a very competitive sport back in Hungary - where I grew up. If you've ever tried kayaking - even just paddling around a lake for half an hour - you must know; it's not the most easy sport in the world. Doing it at the highest level for 13 years made me jacked.
Even though I'm not naturally muscular at all. In fact I'm quite skinny. The years built up.
Ever since moving here to the Bay Area though, I've been doing triathlon. It's a nice and healthy amateur sport that kept me in shape.
I had a good routine going with 6 workouts a week (2 bike, 2 run, 2 swim) every morning and Sunday was rest day.
No dad-bud, I had always kept my six-pack.
But the gym never really made it into the routine.
I have a nice garage gym setup, and I'd hit it every now and then - occasionally with my 5yo who has a ring set in there. But it wasn't regular.
I was lean. But I wasn't muscular.
I started noticing that I lost the definition I used to have, especially around the back, chest and shoulders.
My wife one day started teasing me: "You look skinny. Your chest used to be like a pillow, when we cuddled."
She was kind of half-joking, but it made me think.
I wanted to do something that'll get me back in the gym.
A simple routine that's easy enough I can do it every day.
That's when I had the idea. How about I do 100 pull-ups [1] and 100 pushups for 100 days, without changing anything else in my routine, and document the difference. So no special diet and keep the swim-bike-run schedule I already had.
I gotta say; documenting it didn't seem so important at first, but it turned out to be hugely motivating to see the difference as I went along.
Since I was gonna do it every day I decided to start with a buildup phase. 60-60 for the first week, 80-80 for the second week and then 100-100 for there on out.
I did the sessions at night, because my mornings were already full. Mostly after the kids went to bed. I'd hit the garage, put on some Eminem and roll.
Here's a montage of a few selfies I took along the way:
Some days we were on vacation. Or we had a date-night. Or I was on business trip. But I always found a way to make it happen.
Some days were harder, some were easier.
I had build a callus on my hand, as well as my mind.
It felt good to go crazy about it at times. No excuses.
Business dinner in Seattle ends at 10pm? I still ran around for 5km until I found a playground that had a play structure that I could do the pull-ups on.
Vacation in Italy? Still did the pull-ups on the bike-rack roofs's rectangle shaped tube.
It was a fun challenge as hard physically as mentally.
The results speak for themself.
At the end I stopped counting days and just went along. It could have been closer to 130 days when I first took some rest.
I really helped me get back into the gym routine and I'm still hitting the garage ~5x a week, even as I'm preparing for my next challenge; a sub 3h marathon...
[1] Side note: 100 pull-ups seems like a lot for most people, but like I said, the kayaking background had me do a lot of pull-ups so it wasn't so unfamiliar.