I did not want to do 2016 push-ups. I wanted to do one push-up and add another one every day for an entire year. It did not occur to me that by the end of the year, I would have done 66,795 push-ups! After I did the math, I thought I would stop while I had the chance. It took me three months to complete 2016 push-ups and I want to share this odd experience with you.

The push-ups started as an interesting experiment. I wanted a simple activity that I could do everyday that got more difficult to do over time. Funny enough, the first thing that came to mind was to do push-ups. So, I thought that if I could increase the number of push-ups I did everyday, this would give me what I wanted. And so all I had to do now was follow through.

I started on January 1st and completed one push-up. The next day I would do two, the next day three, and so on. As to be expected, the first day was not difficult. I recorded my one push-up in my log and looked forward to the next day. I did this for three months and here are the things I have learned from doing so.

Daily Progress

With this experiment, I was knew what to expect. I was to do push-ups everyday. What I came to realize was that not only was I improving via repetition, I was improving by quantity. In mathematics, this would be graphed as a linear expression (days on the x-axis, push-ups on the y-axis). Progress based on this model might look steady, but in reality it was quite rapid.

The progress I achieved was rapid because I was dealing with the human body. Muscle, nerves, tissue, and the like all act and react differently to stress over an extended amount of time. As such, I knew that my body would need to rest in order for me to continue. However, my experiment did not allow for adequate rest and thus I began to wonder if this was healthy to continue. I can say that I was lucky not to sustain any long-term injuries due to this lack of rest. If I were to do another experiment like this, I would allow for adequate rest so that the chance of injuring yourself is minimal.

Daily Activity

One of the benefits of doing an activity everyday is that it allows you to establish a habit. After about one month, I established a routine. I noticed that it would be odd for me not to do push-ups. By this time, I was doing around 30-40 push-ups a day. I decided that I would split up my repetitions into 2-3 sets instead of doing one set. This gave me a brief opportunity to rest and I believe that splitting up the repetitions this way was in my best interest.

Result

I coded a program to calculate how many push-ups I did over the months. It turned out by the time three months were over, I had completed exactly 2016 push-ups! It was then that I decided to conclude the experiment. I gave my body a week of rest and then analysed the collected ‘data.’

My final conclusion: doing one physical activity everyday allows one to progress at a rapid, unsustainable rate, establish a routine that is relatively easy to follow, and can result in long-term injury if one does not allow for adequate rest.

What are your thoughts on this push-up experiment? Do you think that it is healthy to do an activity everyday for an extended period of time?