Drop and Give Me 10

Push ups.....does anyone else feel like a deformed, broken worm doing these?

Push ups bring back old elementary school PE class trauma because I've never been able to do an actual, on my toes push up until this past year. So why this year? The hubs and I decided to be more active. Go to the Y, take hikes, bike around town and try to do these things together. And a big part of this for me was to work in strength training in addition to cardio and running. I just don't see any positive changes in my body (i.e. increased endurance, clothes in the closet fitting) unless I'm lifting weights which is the reason I can now do these stupid, wonderful, frustrating things called push ups.

Back to PE class, I remember being about seven or eight and performing group exercises with my class. Our PE teacher would call out different exercises, and I loathed when he said push ups. This is where the deformed, broken worm analogy came to me. After that, I've always just completed push ups on my knees or skipped them in a workout altogether.

But I knew when I was making this list, that I could push myself to the 10 classic push up style mark. My physical list items are definitely the most intimidating, but this first hurdle completed gives me some hope.

But here's the disclaimer. I went back and forth on whether I would post this video of me completing the push ups or not. You'd trust me that I completed the list item if I just told you, right? I really don't want my struggle to do 10 push ups to be on the internet forever or become some awful meme. But I finally decided to post it for someone else who may be struggling with or trying to set a fitness goal. It's worth it. Are my push ups perfect? Nope. Does my nose touch the ground and back up? Um....that's a big nope. But it's my current best version of a push up, and I can do about 10 of them. It's leaps and bounds better than a year ago, and I hope it continues to get better. So for everyone that can go and beast out a bunch of push ups without breaking a sweat, kuddos for you. 

Here's how the rest of us do it - https://vimeo.com/149169540

(Note: Breaking form on number 10 about brought tears, but I think it makes it more real. Hence, why I posted this video versus a redo another day.)