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10k pushups and other silly exercise quests that changed my life

209 points by wjgilmore 1y ago

wjgilmore 1y ago
Thought my fellow programmers/nerds might find this blog post useful and interesting, and hopefully motivational. There isn't much else I'd rather do than screw around with my computers, write code, etc, which has naturally made getting into shape kind of difficult. This year I resolved to do something about it and so embarked on a series of ridiculous exercise quests and am now in the best shape of my adult life.
- dsalzman 1y ago
  Awesome job!
  - wjgilmore 1y ago
    Thank you!
- tomyedwab 1y ago
  Honestly, good for you. I am almost two years into my spreadsheet and I try to get in 10 minutes a day of intense exercise and half an hour or more of walking to counter sitting all day at the computer. Many people try to "get healthy" and change their entire daily routine at once and that is impossible to do while also living a normal life. It sounds like you layered in one activity at a time and each success motivated the next ambitious goal. This is a smart strategy and one I would recommend to others.
  - wjgilmore 1y ago
    I overthought this so, so many times. This time around I was just like see floor, do pushups, log it lol. One thing led to another and now I'm suddenly feeling like Hulk Hogan.
- 3eb7988a1663 1y ago
  I realize it started as somewhat of a joke, but more analytics would have been fun. Tracking your body weight or other quantitative numbers to monitor the improvement. Couch potato zero to 10k anything physicality has to have a noticeable impact, and I am inspired. I like that even though you had multiple low times, there is still enough buffer in the year to hit the goal without having super saiyan discipline.
  - wjgilmore 1y ago
    Definitely did not start as a joke, but I do wish I had taken for instance various body measurements. I can confirm my chest and shoulders are huge compared to the start of 2025. And yes agreed about the importance of continuing through the multiple lows! Sometimes the motivation just wasn't there but I kept plugging along and then suddenly everything came together.
- chis 1y ago
  The question I wonder when reading this is why did this work for you when other exercise routines didn’t? It sounds like you at least tried the gym before and couldn’t stick with it - so why did this one stick? To me it seems a lot of healthy people end up not needing discipline because they find healthy things they enjoy and want to do. Like I wondered if someone copying this would be better off targeting 1000 air squats instead. But maybe that’s not as “cool” and wouldn’t have brought as much intrinsic motivation.
  - wjgilmore 1y ago
    I have no idea why this worked other than I really took to the process of doing the exercises and then logging it all. Once I had a little bit of data I started writing Google Sheets formulas, creating charts, etc and it suddenly became fun. Then when I did get into shape it became a game of beating my previous 5K and 10K times. Lately every few days I go outside and run hard to beat my last time (currently PR is 28:10). I would have smashed this time a few days ago but about 2 miles in I suddenly had a terrible calf cramp that took a few days to get past. Not going to tempt fate again until after completing the Columbus 1/2 marathon on October 19.
    - Neywiny 1y ago
      Not putting words in your mouth but your 10k mark I think coincided with my viewpoint for my own fitness journey. You did it in your living room. The gym is a whole thing. Getting the without gear, the water bottle, the driving, etc etc. Then when you're exhausted and tired you have to drive back or walk back or whatever. Doing push ups in your living room has no barrier to entry or exit. You do them when you want to, you stop when you want to, and you're back on the couch watching tv to recover within seconds. Can do it in hotel rooms, late at night, 5am, whatever. For me, that's the benefit and why such exercises work when gym doesn't. Maybe some of your success is from a similar vein, maybe not
      - wjgilmore 1y ago
        100% yes! Everything you describe is spot on with my experience. Took me a long, long time to realize in order to get into ridiculous shape I need 1) the floor 2) running shoes.
- frays 1y ago
  Thank you for sharing this post! Do you have any concerns that you're only doing push movements? My physiotherapist told me that it's quite easy to build imbalanced muscles by excessively doing only push ups, without incorporating "pull" movements in my exercises too. It seems like you would've come across this in your research but don't think it's an issue seeing as you seem very healthy and happy with your current shape?
  - wjgilmore 1y ago
    Sorry for slow response. At this point I'm doing much more than push movements. The pushups remain (I did 527 on Saturday for instance) however I'm also doing bootcamp-style track workouts, occasionally lifting weights, running hard, and eating very clean. And yes I am beyond happy with current fitness level and shape however new goals will be set for 2026. :-)
lawgimenez 1y ago
This is inspirational, I am also looking into getting back in shape, getting my weight up since I am going to be approaching 40. And randomly some part of my body just hurts during the day.
- wjgilmore 1y ago
  I hurt everywhere before starting this crazy experiment. Seriously. Now all of the pain is gone and I feel like Superman.
  - lawgimenez 1y ago
    Awesome, bookmarked your post! Thanks for this, can't wait to try pushups again.
- nick__m 1y ago
  Push-ups are magical against back pain !
sandspar 1y ago
Awesome. I like how fitness snowballs. Once you develop a decent body, it feels like a shame to eat bad food. And so on. It's like a guy who has a beat up car, doesn't like the way it looks, so doesn't take care of it - then buys a nice car, likes how it looks, so starts taking care of it. Staying fit becomes easier and easier.
- captainkrtek 1y ago
  100% this. I now walk down the snack aisle, look at nearly all the things I used to regularly grab (doritos, lays, etc.) and feel gross. If I'm feeling lucky I'll maybe buy a bag of tortilla chips with guac/salsa as a treat, but i'm now completely turned off of most "junk" food.
kccqzy 1y ago
My push-up story: I used to think I can easily do many pushups until I met my personal trainer and did push-ups in front of him. In his opinion, none of my pushups were correct. It was discouraging to hear someone dissect my mistakes: elbows flaring out instead of being held close to the body, hand position too wide or too forward, hips dropping. Of these, fixing the last mistake of hips dropping seemed the most elusive. Some days I could control the hips perfectly well, but other times I seemed to be unable to control the movement of the hips. I still do 50 pushups per week with a mix of good and bad form (which is of course way less than 10k per year), but I found that I've mentally associated pushups with an exercise that I couldn't do well. It doesn't give me any dopamine boost. I'm much happier doing something else like barbell squats which I could do with good form and increasing weights.
- wjgilmore 1y ago
  Don’t feel bad the other day a friend sent me a story about a guy who recently set some record by completing 1,721 pushups in one hour. Needless to say I dropped down and did 20 more. https://brobible.com/sports/article/oregon-army-national-guard-major-sets-new-push-ups-world-record/ https://brobible.com/sports/article/oregon-army-national-gua...
  - pengaru 1y ago
    A small book I read years ago mentioned said Bruce Lee would do 1k daily as an example of self-discipline. It was in addition to all his other training, this was just the baseline. Once you can do 100 in a set though, that's just ten sets throughout the day. Totally doable if your employer can tolerate a sweaty employee.
    - wjgilmore 1y ago
      I've learned it is very important to think about achieving this output in small batches (sets) as you mention. For instance on Saturday I did 527 pushups. I did a set of 30 in the morning, and then did 400 on the soccer field with my friend Charlie (the neighbor mentioned in post). But we did these in 16 sets of 25, every five minutes over the course of our kids' soccer game. Then I came home and figured since I was so close to my PR (525), I might as well grind out another hundred in order to eclipse that number. I wound up at 527, doing the last 97 in batches of 15, 10, and even 5. I actually think I did the last two in sets of 1 lol because I was so wiped out!
kristianp 1y ago
Sometimes I feel better after a fast food meal. It's like a fat and sugar high, almost like you're feeling the fat coursing through your veins. Most of the time I definitely don't feel better.
- 1970-01-01 1y ago
  I've had this feeling too. Sometimes fast foods are capable of settling down a stomach to the point of making you feel good.
copypaper 1y ago
Congrats on the results, that's awesome! I like the simplicity of push ups; you can do them wherever and it's very hard to come up with an excuse to not do them. Have you considered throwing pull-ups into the mix? Personally I found it very very easy to come up with excuses to not go to the gym. Too tired, too far, it'll be too busy at this time, I don't have enough time, etc. The closest gym to me is 15 minutes. That's 30 minutes round trip + ~$260/yr + having to wait for most machines. Going 5 days a week would be 130 hours/yr in just driving for me! I finally cancelled my membership and built a home gym. Best decision I've ever made. It costed me around ~$1200 in total for 300lb of weights, a power rack, an olympic barbell, a diy bench, and a full calisthenics "park" [1]. I've been a lot more consistent as I have zero excuses to not workout! The only thing I miss is the gym environment though; it's harder to be motivated when nobody is watching. I've found having a goal/routine to help with that though. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ESce1kqRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ESce1kqRc
frfl 1y ago
Inspired me to drop and give 50 now. ~111/day until end of year to hit 10k, 9950 to go. Thank you for the post!
- wjgilmore 1y ago
  LETS GOOOOOOOO
ggm 1y ago
> When was the last time you heard somebody (including yourself) say they feel better after eating fast food? These foods are designed to push the yum button with a carefully chosen mix of fat, salt, carbs, umami components, sugar, protein. It's not spaced out the way it would be eating the same ingredients slowly as a Greek salad with lamb, pita and feta, but the ingredient lists are not dissimilar, lamb for beef. The point is that ultra processed food inputs mainline all of the positive experience into a remarkably brief period of time. Fred Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth wrote about this in "the space merchants" in 1952. I don't think they expected it to come true inside their decade, but the seeds were laid by Ray Kroc and others across that time. I don't deny your reasoning but I kind of say you're arriving at a rejection of the yum impact a long way after you've been hooked in.
- jimmaswell 1y ago
  "We all know the answer to this question: never" Absolute nonsense, I feel amazing after eating fast food. I generally just get a chicken sandwich or burger or snack wrap, no soda or fries, maybe a milkshake - why would I not feel great after eating protein and fat? Dairy feels great for me too. This has to be utter nocebo on part of anyone who's convinced fast food is killing them, there's no way the food itself has that effect. The demonization of fast food is nonsensical in general - a burger made at McDonald's is not nutritionally different in any significant way from one made at home.
  - wjgilmore 1y ago
    Given a choice between eating fast food and a home cooked meal I’ll take the latter every time. But to each their own, I’m not here to judge.
  - gabrielsroka 1y ago
    The hamburger bun has sugar, dextrose and maltodextrin, etc in it. When I bake bread at home, I don't add those things. The ketchup has corn syrup. These things might be small but maybe they add up. https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/hamburger.html#accordion-c921f9207b-item-283bee7dbd https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/hamburger.html#ac...
captainkrtek 1y ago
Nice work and great blog post! If it's any inspiration to other folks out there, or if my anecdotes are of any value, I went from 220lbs down to 165lbs over the course of about 2 years and have kept it off now for another 3 years so far. The main things that worked for me: - Eating things that kept me full enough: I would wake up and have a light breakfast (one of: bagel, eggs, toast, yogurt), exercise mostly fasted (30min low-intensity run, 1hr bike ride), get home and have a protein shake (some say casein protein leaves you feeling fuller longer than whey, I experienced this), snack on healthy things throughout the day (eg: nuts, protein bar), drink lots of water, eat whatever I wanted for dinner but not to the point of feeling stuffed (I really like pasta), and going to bed around 10-11pm. The shift for me was not working in the office anymore, which meant no shortcuts like burgers for lunch or expensive food trucks to fight the office depression. Consistent cardio was also the other piece for me, not only did it help a ton with my mental health and stress, but the low intensity cardio day over day I saw producing weight loss results. No gyms, no fad diets, just consistent daily-ish cardio, not eating too much, sleeping well, drinking water. Though I know everyone is different :-)
- mhb 1y ago
  I don't know when the GLP drugs came on the scene but did you consider those or if they weren't but you were undertaking this now, would you have considered them?
  - captainkrtek 1y ago
    They weren’t a thing when I started this in 2020 (or at least I was unaware). I’m not opposed to them (though I don’t take any). I used to be skinny and athletic as a teen so I knew my body could get back to that, but had I grown up and always had difficulty I wouldn’t have been opposed to trying it out, even if its just to get a kick start. It’s hard to exercise with a extra weight and low muscle, so getting some pounds off would be useful I think.
    - stavros 1y ago
      If you don't have food noise, it's not going to be a massive help, I think. They're good in that you forget to eat, but they're bad in that you forget to eat. As a cure for food noise, though, they're massively helpful. I had forgotten, if I've ever known, what it's like to not think of food all the time.
Apreche 1y ago
My problem is I can’t do 1. If I could do just 1 I feel like I could slowly work my way up to 2, 5, 10, 100, whatever. Starting at 0 trying to get to 1 feels insurmountable. I have tried all kinds of advice from the Internet. I tried doing pushups against the wall or on my knees. I kept that up for quite awhile, but still never got close to doing 1 real normal push-up correctly. I don’t have the discipline to keep going when it takes that long to get any results.
- ajkjk 1y ago
  This is kinda sad to hear because I think it's more-or-less an immutable fact that, barring disabilities/injuries, anyone can do pushups if they try every day for just a few weeks, and then you'd be off to the races. Actually it feels really good to have that part of your body start to "click"; a bit of a "this is right, I was built to feel strong here" feeling. I think there's some widespread misconceptions about how "starting" an exercise is supposed to go. The problem is that starting out is nothing like doing them once you can do them. (In no sense am I an expert on this; I just have some intuition about it and have coached some friends through trying pushups when they couldn't.) There is a whole chain of muscles involved in the motion--actually, there are a bunch of different chains, because there are a bunch of different kinds of pushups that use different muscles. The thing that goes wrong is usually that there are some "weak links" in that chain: muscles you've never really used before, and maybe don't even know how to activate. The actual pushup motion, the one you see people do online or whatever, is not really possible until you have these muscles linked up. It's just not going to happen. Maybe you'll eke out one with tremendous effort, but it won't look or feel like the pushups other people do. Instead the way to start is to do anything at all that feels doable but a bit hard in that position. Yoga positions like down and up dog are great. Staying in a plank for a bit is great. Play around with the arms in different positions. Go down just a little bit but don't stay down. Etc. If you do things like this for 5 minutes a day, just pushing yourself to find things that feel tough each time, I think you will be able to do a proper pushup in 2-3 weeks. The thing to keep in mind is that the goal is to learn how your shoulders, chest, and back work together. For example, instead of putting your elbows out wide and trying to stay up but falling--try narrow elbows and then shove the ground as if are pushing a heavy grocery cart. Or, stay on vertical arms but rock forward and back. Or, stay on your elbows, but lift your feet up on something. Whatever is hard but doable. (This is all 100% vibes, I don't know anything about anatomy or fitness. But I'm pretty sure it works.) (Mostly I have coached people on the mindset about starting exercises with regard to climbing and particularly pullups. New climbers tend to not understand that there is just no way they're going to do a whole pullup if they can't do the first quarter second of the pullup, which is the hardest part, due to the awkward angle of your arm and shoulder giving a mechanical advantage particularly when you don't have much lats/scapular muscle. So train that first! They tend to cheat that part instead of working on it and don't understand why they're not making progress.)
lostmsu 1y ago
I like the idea. Can use https://simplecounter.app/ https://simplecounter.app/ for basic tracking (not on Safari/iOS as it clears the value).
01100011 1y ago
If you're a keyboard jockey like me you probably have or are prone to have shoulder issues. You really should be doing 2:1 pulling:pushing, or even omit most pushing entirely. Nothing helped me as much as learning this. Spend more time doing facepulls, rows, pulldowns, and any weird variation you can come up with which works your back muscles. I went from a hunchback to mostly not a hunchback and my shoulders are better for it. There are few things that will blow up your shoulders as quickly as doing pressing movements wrong. If you want to embark on a pushup journey at least learn good form.
- stevewodil 1y ago
  I prefer a more optimal ratio such as 10:1 for optimal injury prevention and optimal posture correction
- samcheng 1y ago
  Are there any calisthenic exercises for pulling, beyond pullups? Seems like most of them require weights or machines.
  - 1ark 1y ago
    Some form of horizontal pulling such as Aussie pullups. It's even better in this scenario. If you have the pullup bar at home already, get some gymnastic rings for example.
  - globular-toast 1y ago
    You can do bodyweight rows if you have a low bar or even using a table. Way back before I even set foot in a gym I built strength at home doing press ups, pulls ups/chin ups (using a door frame bar), rows using a table and dips using the back of two chairs.
    - Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
      I think the best is to use gymnastics rings. They aren't expensive, but you do need to attach something solid to the ceiling to connect them to (I use a piece of iron angle painted white, lagged screwed into ceiling joists). The straps are quickly adjustable and you can do a bunch of pulling exercises, including the rows. The real advantage of the rings is that they allow your wrists and elbows to change angle through the pull path which can greatly reduce the stress on the joints and feel more natural too.
bix6 1y ago
Has anyone beat costochondritis? Pushups really flare it for me. Congrats on the journey WJ!
jimmaswell 1y ago
I tried for quite a while to do the "100 pushups" program but I could never get past 7 pushups. They can be a deceptively very difficult thing to get right. For one, you find it takes great concentration and continuous form checks not to do things that route 100% of the exercise through your shoulders instead of chest. Your elbows will want to flare out all the way, because our body just prefers shoulders for some reason and really really doesn't want the chest to be exercised, and pretty soon you'll have a shoulder impingement. At this point you have to give up on the exercise for a while to not inflame it further and make the injury permanent. Even trying my hardest to do the form perfectly I start feeling something in my shoulder eventually. Besides the form, I just found them very hard to progress on compared to other exercises. For half a year or so a few years ago, I did them all the time wherever I was to pass the time, usually to failure. But I just never found that point where I could keep going and going like most people reach easily. When I started my form was wrong and I think I could get to 8 but once I corrected the form I never got that far. The number just rose to 6 or 7 and wouldn't budge. I tracked all my calories and macros - I was only very slightly below maintenance while making sure I had at least 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight, every day. Here's the log from when I tried the 100 pushups program at the end: Failed week 1 and had to redo it 1 time, failed week 2 4 times and had to go back to week 1, passed week 1, failed week 2 and gave up. I got an optional free testosterone test recently out of curiosity. It was only 326 which is in "reference" but the consensus online seems to be that this is too low for 30 and men tend to feel much better at a level of 500+. So I'm strongly considering starting TRT and trying again, maybe with a generous calorie surplus this time to make sure there are no possible obstacles? Not sure what else I could do to move past such a plateau. I hit a similar one in the bench press too.
- AYBABTME 1y ago
  Start with using your knees as a pivot instead of your feet. Then work up the count while keeping the form. It shouldn't take too long (maybe a month) if you keep it steady and soon enough you'll be doing normal push ups (starting back at a low count). You'll be surprised how quickly you can go from 5 to 10, 15, 25, 50 push ups simply by accepting your daily limits and doing them again nonetheless.
- 1y ago
noduerme 1y ago
I love this DIY method! Sometimes you just know what's best for yourself. I've done something very similar for about 8 years now. Push-ups and crunches (and sometimes burpees). I spent most of my life thin, just because of my lucky metabolism. In high school, people thought I was anorexic even though I ate junk food all the time. I'm someone who hates to break a sweat unless absolutely necessary, who would never go to a gym, and who also works a very sedentary programming job... and everything was just fine until alcohol and age caught up with me in my late 30s. So, I remembered the stupid stuff they had us do in high school gym class. There were actual educational lessons there, right? Push-ups and crunches. I use a Moka Pot to make my coffee in the morning, it takes exactly 9 minutes to boil on my stove. I started off with 30 push-ups and 30 crunches a day, before the pot boiled, before I got out of my underwear. I kept adding a few a day until I was at 100 + 100 (Initially I would take breaks in the push-ups at 25, 50, and 75 - but eventually I could just do 100 without stopping). The results of it were surprisingly good, for something that takes less than 9 minutes of your day. Just a side note about McDonald's -- I've only ever gotten one rancid McDonald's meal in my life, and it was REALLY bad. I almost never eat fast food anymore either, except in a very particular case. The author says: >>When was the last time you heard somebody (including yourself) say they feel better after eating fast food? Me. I have some level of IBS - not debilitating, but enough that I don't want to leave the house sometimes. I also have lived in a lot of countries with questionable food sanitation, although now I'm just in America and eat a lot of Indian and Thai food. Anyway, for whatever reason, if I need to catch a flight in the morning, the sure shot 100% bulletproof way to know that I will not need a bathroom is to eat a Big Mac, nuggets and fries the night before. That meal can somehow completely stop a multi-day IBS episode in its tracks. I don't do it unless I need to, but somehow it completely calms my gut and binds up whatever's in there. I literally do it almost every time before I fly. My home cooking is much more likely to leave me stuck in a bathroom somewhere. Make of it what you will. One other thing - walking. This is what really caused me to lose a lot of weight and get back to within my optimal zone. I am (as reads the bio) an alcoholic. When I get done working at home, I go to a bar. I track my calories, and about 50% of them are alcohol. To motivate myself to walk, I started picking bars that were further away. And then much further away. So if I'm going out for 3 beers, I'll often walk 1.5 miles to the first bar, then have another beer each half-mile on the way back. This makes an astounding difference. You're actually hungry when you get home, still have a light buzz, listened to some interesting podcasts, and you sleep a lot better. All of this is advice from a 45-year-old whose habits are very, very bad - I am not some paragon of health. I smoke like a chimney. I'll probably die young. A little bit of extra struggle goes a long way, though.
solsane 1y ago
Glad to see that Saitama is active on Hacker News!
yetihehe 1y ago
Everybody says "drink a lot of water", but nobody says how much. Often people say that you need at least 2.5L/day. My constant headaches stopped and I'm finally able to lose weight (from 120kg) after I started to drink 4.5L/day. It's hard to keep up with such amount of water, but it looks like it was necessary.
- Gud 1y ago
  Be careful, you can mess up your kidneys.
- justsomehnguy 1y ago
  > but nobody says how much Because nobody knows how much do you need. A good indicator is the colour of your #1 and the overall consistency of your #2
  - yetihehe 1y ago
    Yeah, but #1 still looked good.
dsign 1y ago
I lost all of my back strength during my startup days, which ended in chronic back pain. Worst, trying to run or even a soft jog would make things worse. The thing that reversed the trend was SUP, which now I do all year round even in frigid waters. Back pain is gone and I can run again. Still trying to lose weight though.
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QuiEgo 1y ago
This was entertaining and super motivational, thanks for sharing! Can you share the final version of the sheet you made? I'm curious what your columns ended up being, in addition to the original push-ups column.
aiiizzz 1y ago
Not to be a downer, but the blog post does not describe much in the change of his life.
chevyharley2 1y ago
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Kate5477 1y ago
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Kate5477 1y ago
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macartain 1y ago
Agree this is very inspiring - I suspect many folks out there might respond to a simple approach like this. I have fallen off several wagons in this regard, Convict Conditioning and the Busy Dad Routine most recently - generally because, although fun and encouraging initially, they are just too much faff from an administrative perspective! I am up for this! One question: do you accrue push-ups during the day in a 'greasing the groove' type approach and then stick in the total at end of day? Or more of a session? Just curious what was successful for you...

209 points by wjgilmore 1y ago

Thought my fellow programmers/nerds might find this blog post useful and interesting, and hopefully motivational. There isn't much else I'd rather do than screw around with my computers, write code, etc, which has naturally made getting into shape kind of difficult. This year I resolved to do something about it and so embarked on a series of ridiculous exercise quests and am now in the best shape of my adult life.

dsalzman 1y ago
Awesome job!
- wjgilmore 1y ago
  Thank you!
tomyedwab 1y ago
Honestly, good for you. I am almost two years into my spreadsheet and I try to get in 10 minutes a day of intense exercise and half an hour or more of walking to counter sitting all day at the computer. Many people try to "get healthy" and change their entire daily routine at once and that is impossible to do while also living a normal life. It sounds like you layered in one activity at a time and each success motivated the next ambitious goal. This is a smart strategy and one I would recommend to others.
- wjgilmore 1y ago
  I overthought this so, so many times. This time around I was just like see floor, do pushups, log it lol. One thing led to another and now I'm suddenly feeling like Hulk Hogan.
3eb7988a1663 1y ago
I realize it started as somewhat of a joke, but more analytics would have been fun. Tracking your body weight or other quantitative numbers to monitor the improvement. Couch potato zero to 10k anything physicality has to have a noticeable impact, and I am inspired. I like that even though you had multiple low times, there is still enough buffer in the year to hit the goal without having super saiyan discipline.
- wjgilmore 1y ago
  Definitely did not start as a joke, but I do wish I had taken for instance various body measurements. I can confirm my chest and shoulders are huge compared to the start of 2025. And yes agreed about the importance of continuing through the multiple lows! Sometimes the motivation just wasn't there but I kept plugging along and then suddenly everything came together.
chis 1y ago
The question I wonder when reading this is why did this work for you when other exercise routines didn’t? It sounds like you at least tried the gym before and couldn’t stick with it - so why did this one stick? To me it seems a lot of healthy people end up not needing discipline because they find healthy things they enjoy and want to do. Like I wondered if someone copying this would be better off targeting 1000 air squats instead. But maybe that’s not as “cool” and wouldn’t have brought as much intrinsic motivation.
- wjgilmore 1y ago
  I have no idea why this worked other than I really took to the process of doing the exercises and then logging it all. Once I had a little bit of data I started writing Google Sheets formulas, creating charts, etc and it suddenly became fun. Then when I did get into shape it became a game of beating my previous 5K and 10K times. Lately every few days I go outside and run hard to beat my last time (currently PR is 28:10). I would have smashed this time a few days ago but about 2 miles in I suddenly had a terrible calf cramp that took a few days to get past. Not going to tempt fate again until after completing the Columbus 1/2 marathon on October 19.
  - Neywiny 1y ago
    Not putting words in your mouth but your 10k mark I think coincided with my viewpoint for my own fitness journey. You did it in your living room. The gym is a whole thing. Getting the without gear, the water bottle, the driving, etc etc. Then when you're exhausted and tired you have to drive back or walk back or whatever. Doing push ups in your living room has no barrier to entry or exit. You do them when you want to, you stop when you want to, and you're back on the couch watching tv to recover within seconds. Can do it in hotel rooms, late at night, 5am, whatever. For me, that's the benefit and why such exercises work when gym doesn't. Maybe some of your success is from a similar vein, maybe not
    - wjgilmore 1y ago
      100% yes! Everything you describe is spot on with my experience. Took me a long, long time to realize in order to get into ridiculous shape I need 1) the floor 2) running shoes.
frays 1y ago
Thank you for sharing this post! Do you have any concerns that you're only doing push movements? My physiotherapist told me that it's quite easy to build imbalanced muscles by excessively doing only push ups, without incorporating "pull" movements in my exercises too. It seems like you would've come across this in your research but don't think it's an issue seeing as you seem very healthy and happy with your current shape?
- wjgilmore 1y ago
  Sorry for slow response. At this point I'm doing much more than push movements. The pushups remain (I did 527 on Saturday for instance) however I'm also doing bootcamp-style track workouts, occasionally lifting weights, running hard, and eating very clean. And yes I am beyond happy with current fitness level and shape however new goals will be set for 2026. :-)

lawgimenez 1y ago

This is inspirational, I am also looking into getting back in shape, getting my weight up since I am going to be approaching 40. And randomly some part of my body just hurts during the day.

wjgilmore 1y ago
I hurt everywhere before starting this crazy experiment. Seriously. Now all of the pain is gone and I feel like Superman.
- lawgimenez 1y ago
  Awesome, bookmarked your post! Thanks for this, can't wait to try pushups again.
nick__m 1y ago
Push-ups are magical against back pain !

sandspar 1y ago

Awesome. I like how fitness snowballs. Once you develop a decent body, it feels like a shame to eat bad food. And so on. It's like a guy who has a beat up car, doesn't like the way it looks, so doesn't take care of it - then buys a nice car, likes how it looks, so starts taking care of it. Staying fit becomes easier and easier.

captainkrtek 1y ago
100% this. I now walk down the snack aisle, look at nearly all the things I used to regularly grab (doritos, lays, etc.) and feel gross. If I'm feeling lucky I'll maybe buy a bag of tortilla chips with guac/salsa as a treat, but i'm now completely turned off of most "junk" food.

kccqzy 1y ago

My push-up story: I used to think I can easily do many pushups until I met my personal trainer and did push-ups in front of him. In his opinion, none of my pushups were correct. It was discouraging to hear someone dissect my mistakes: elbows flaring out instead of being held close to the body, hand position too wide or too forward, hips dropping. Of these, fixing the last mistake of hips dropping seemed the most elusive. Some days I could control the hips perfectly well, but other times I seemed to be unable to control the movement of the hips. I still do 50 pushups per week with a mix of good and bad form (which is of course way less than 10k per year), but I found that I've mentally associated pushups with an exercise that I couldn't do well. It doesn't give me any dopamine boost. I'm much happier doing something else like barbell squats which I could do with good form and increasing weights.

wjgilmore 1y ago
Don’t feel bad the other day a friend sent me a story about a guy who recently set some record by completing 1,721 pushups in one hour. Needless to say I dropped down and did 20 more. https://brobible.com/sports/article/oregon-army-national-guard-major-sets-new-push-ups-world-record/ https://brobible.com/sports/article/oregon-army-national-gua...
- pengaru 1y ago
  A small book I read years ago mentioned said Bruce Lee would do 1k daily as an example of self-discipline. It was in addition to all his other training, this was just the baseline. Once you can do 100 in a set though, that's just ten sets throughout the day. Totally doable if your employer can tolerate a sweaty employee.
  - wjgilmore 1y ago
    I've learned it is very important to think about achieving this output in small batches (sets) as you mention. For instance on Saturday I did 527 pushups. I did a set of 30 in the morning, and then did 400 on the soccer field with my friend Charlie (the neighbor mentioned in post). But we did these in 16 sets of 25, every five minutes over the course of our kids' soccer game. Then I came home and figured since I was so close to my PR (525), I might as well grind out another hundred in order to eclipse that number. I wound up at 527, doing the last 97 in batches of 15, 10, and even 5. I actually think I did the last two in sets of 1 lol because I was so wiped out!

kristianp 1y ago

Sometimes I feel better after a fast food meal. It's like a fat and sugar high, almost like you're feeling the fat coursing through your veins. Most of the time I definitely don't feel better.

1970-01-01 1y ago
I've had this feeling too. Sometimes fast foods are capable of settling down a stomach to the point of making you feel good.

copypaper 1y ago

Congrats on the results, that's awesome! I like the simplicity of push ups; you can do them wherever and it's very hard to come up with an excuse to not do them. Have you considered throwing pull-ups into the mix? Personally I found it very very easy to come up with excuses to not go to the gym. Too tired, too far, it'll be too busy at this time, I don't have enough time, etc. The closest gym to me is 15 minutes. That's 30 minutes round trip + ~$260/yr + having to wait for most machines. Going 5 days a week would be 130 hours/yr in just driving for me! I finally cancelled my membership and built a home gym. Best decision I've ever made. It costed me around ~$1200 in total for 300lb of weights, a power rack, an olympic barbell, a diy bench, and a full calisthenics "park" [1]. I've been a lot more consistent as I have zero excuses to not workout! The only thing I miss is the gym environment though; it's harder to be motivated when nobody is watching. I've found having a goal/routine to help with that though. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ESce1kqRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ESce1kqRc

frfl 1y ago

Inspired me to drop and give 50 now. ~111/day until end of year to hit 10k, 9950 to go. Thank you for the post!

wjgilmore 1y ago
LETS GOOOOOOOO

ggm 1y ago

> When was the last time you heard somebody (including yourself) say they feel better after eating fast food? These foods are designed to push the yum button with a carefully chosen mix of fat, salt, carbs, umami components, sugar, protein. It's not spaced out the way it would be eating the same ingredients slowly as a Greek salad with lamb, pita and feta, but the ingredient lists are not dissimilar, lamb for beef. The point is that ultra processed food inputs mainline all of the positive experience into a remarkably brief period of time. Fred Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth wrote about this in "the space merchants" in 1952. I don't think they expected it to come true inside their decade, but the seeds were laid by Ray Kroc and others across that time. I don't deny your reasoning but I kind of say you're arriving at a rejection of the yum impact a long way after you've been hooked in.

jimmaswell 1y ago
"We all know the answer to this question: never" Absolute nonsense, I feel amazing after eating fast food. I generally just get a chicken sandwich or burger or snack wrap, no soda or fries, maybe a milkshake - why would I not feel great after eating protein and fat? Dairy feels great for me too. This has to be utter nocebo on part of anyone who's convinced fast food is killing them, there's no way the food itself has that effect. The demonization of fast food is nonsensical in general - a burger made at McDonald's is not nutritionally different in any significant way from one made at home.
- wjgilmore 1y ago
  Given a choice between eating fast food and a home cooked meal I’ll take the latter every time. But to each their own, I’m not here to judge.
- gabrielsroka 1y ago
  The hamburger bun has sugar, dextrose and maltodextrin, etc in it. When I bake bread at home, I don't add those things. The ketchup has corn syrup. These things might be small but maybe they add up. https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/hamburger.html#accordion-c921f9207b-item-283bee7dbd https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/hamburger.html#ac...

captainkrtek 1y ago

Nice work and great blog post! If it's any inspiration to other folks out there, or if my anecdotes are of any value, I went from 220lbs down to 165lbs over the course of about 2 years and have kept it off now for another 3 years so far. The main things that worked for me: - Eating things that kept me full enough: I would wake up and have a light breakfast (one of: bagel, eggs, toast, yogurt), exercise mostly fasted (30min low-intensity run, 1hr bike ride), get home and have a protein shake (some say casein protein leaves you feeling fuller longer than whey, I experienced this), snack on healthy things throughout the day (eg: nuts, protein bar), drink lots of water, eat whatever I wanted for dinner but not to the point of feeling stuffed (I really like pasta), and going to bed around 10-11pm. The shift for me was not working in the office anymore, which meant no shortcuts like burgers for lunch or expensive food trucks to fight the office depression. Consistent cardio was also the other piece for me, not only did it help a ton with my mental health and stress, but the low intensity cardio day over day I saw producing weight loss results. No gyms, no fad diets, just consistent daily-ish cardio, not eating too much, sleeping well, drinking water. Though I know everyone is different :-)

mhb 1y ago
I don't know when the GLP drugs came on the scene but did you consider those or if they weren't but you were undertaking this now, would you have considered them?
- captainkrtek 1y ago
  They weren’t a thing when I started this in 2020 (or at least I was unaware). I’m not opposed to them (though I don’t take any). I used to be skinny and athletic as a teen so I knew my body could get back to that, but had I grown up and always had difficulty I wouldn’t have been opposed to trying it out, even if its just to get a kick start. It’s hard to exercise with a extra weight and low muscle, so getting some pounds off would be useful I think.
  - stavros 1y ago
    If you don't have food noise, it's not going to be a massive help, I think. They're good in that you forget to eat, but they're bad in that you forget to eat. As a cure for food noise, though, they're massively helpful. I had forgotten, if I've ever known, what it's like to not think of food all the time.

Apreche 1y ago

My problem is I can’t do 1. If I could do just 1 I feel like I could slowly work my way up to 2, 5, 10, 100, whatever. Starting at 0 trying to get to 1 feels insurmountable. I have tried all kinds of advice from the Internet. I tried doing pushups against the wall or on my knees. I kept that up for quite awhile, but still never got close to doing 1 real normal push-up correctly. I don’t have the discipline to keep going when it takes that long to get any results.

ajkjk 1y ago
This is kinda sad to hear because I think it's more-or-less an immutable fact that, barring disabilities/injuries, anyone can do pushups if they try every day for just a few weeks, and then you'd be off to the races. Actually it feels really good to have that part of your body start to "click"; a bit of a "this is right, I was built to feel strong here" feeling. I think there's some widespread misconceptions about how "starting" an exercise is supposed to go. The problem is that starting out is nothing like doing them once you can do them. (In no sense am I an expert on this; I just have some intuition about it and have coached some friends through trying pushups when they couldn't.) There is a whole chain of muscles involved in the motion--actually, there are a bunch of different chains, because there are a bunch of different kinds of pushups that use different muscles. The thing that goes wrong is usually that there are some "weak links" in that chain: muscles you've never really used before, and maybe don't even know how to activate. The actual pushup motion, the one you see people do online or whatever, is not really possible until you have these muscles linked up. It's just not going to happen. Maybe you'll eke out one with tremendous effort, but it won't look or feel like the pushups other people do. Instead the way to start is to do anything at all that feels doable but a bit hard in that position. Yoga positions like down and up dog are great. Staying in a plank for a bit is great. Play around with the arms in different positions. Go down just a little bit but don't stay down. Etc. If you do things like this for 5 minutes a day, just pushing yourself to find things that feel tough each time, I think you will be able to do a proper pushup in 2-3 weeks. The thing to keep in mind is that the goal is to learn how your shoulders, chest, and back work together. For example, instead of putting your elbows out wide and trying to stay up but falling--try narrow elbows and then shove the ground as if are pushing a heavy grocery cart. Or, stay on vertical arms but rock forward and back. Or, stay on your elbows, but lift your feet up on something. Whatever is hard but doable. (This is all 100% vibes, I don't know anything about anatomy or fitness. But I'm pretty sure it works.) (Mostly I have coached people on the mindset about starting exercises with regard to climbing and particularly pullups. New climbers tend to not understand that there is just no way they're going to do a whole pullup if they can't do the first quarter second of the pullup, which is the hardest part, due to the awkward angle of your arm and shoulder giving a mechanical advantage particularly when you don't have much lats/scapular muscle. So train that first! They tend to cheat that part instead of working on it and don't understand why they're not making progress.)

lostmsu 1y ago

I like the idea. Can use https://simplecounter.app/ https://simplecounter.app/ for basic tracking (not on Safari/iOS as it clears the value).

01100011 1y ago

If you're a keyboard jockey like me you probably have or are prone to have shoulder issues. You really should be doing 2:1 pulling:pushing, or even omit most pushing entirely. Nothing helped me as much as learning this. Spend more time doing facepulls, rows, pulldowns, and any weird variation you can come up with which works your back muscles. I went from a hunchback to mostly not a hunchback and my shoulders are better for it. There are few things that will blow up your shoulders as quickly as doing pressing movements wrong. If you want to embark on a pushup journey at least learn good form.

stevewodil 1y ago
I prefer a more optimal ratio such as 10:1 for optimal injury prevention and optimal posture correction
samcheng 1y ago
Are there any calisthenic exercises for pulling, beyond pullups? Seems like most of them require weights or machines.
- 1ark 1y ago
  Some form of horizontal pulling such as Aussie pullups. It's even better in this scenario. If you have the pullup bar at home already, get some gymnastic rings for example.
- globular-toast 1y ago
  You can do bodyweight rows if you have a low bar or even using a table. Way back before I even set foot in a gym I built strength at home doing press ups, pulls ups/chin ups (using a door frame bar), rows using a table and dips using the back of two chairs.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
    I think the best is to use gymnastics rings. They aren't expensive, but you do need to attach something solid to the ceiling to connect them to (I use a piece of iron angle painted white, lagged screwed into ceiling joists). The straps are quickly adjustable and you can do a bunch of pulling exercises, including the rows. The real advantage of the rings is that they allow your wrists and elbows to change angle through the pull path which can greatly reduce the stress on the joints and feel more natural too.

bix6 1y ago

Has anyone beat costochondritis? Pushups really flare it for me. Congrats on the journey WJ!

jimmaswell 1y ago

I tried for quite a while to do the "100 pushups" program but I could never get past 7 pushups. They can be a deceptively very difficult thing to get right. For one, you find it takes great concentration and continuous form checks not to do things that route 100% of the exercise through your shoulders instead of chest. Your elbows will want to flare out all the way, because our body just prefers shoulders for some reason and really really doesn't want the chest to be exercised, and pretty soon you'll have a shoulder impingement. At this point you have to give up on the exercise for a while to not inflame it further and make the injury permanent. Even trying my hardest to do the form perfectly I start feeling something in my shoulder eventually. Besides the form, I just found them very hard to progress on compared to other exercises. For half a year or so a few years ago, I did them all the time wherever I was to pass the time, usually to failure. But I just never found that point where I could keep going and going like most people reach easily. When I started my form was wrong and I think I could get to 8 but once I corrected the form I never got that far. The number just rose to 6 or 7 and wouldn't budge. I tracked all my calories and macros - I was only very slightly below maintenance while making sure I had at least 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight, every day. Here's the log from when I tried the 100 pushups program at the end: Failed week 1 and had to redo it 1 time, failed week 2 4 times and had to go back to week 1, passed week 1, failed week 2 and gave up. I got an optional free testosterone test recently out of curiosity. It was only 326 which is in "reference" but the consensus online seems to be that this is too low for 30 and men tend to feel much better at a level of 500+. So I'm strongly considering starting TRT and trying again, maybe with a generous calorie surplus this time to make sure there are no possible obstacles? Not sure what else I could do to move past such a plateau. I hit a similar one in the bench press too.

AYBABTME 1y ago
Start with using your knees as a pivot instead of your feet. Then work up the count while keeping the form. It shouldn't take too long (maybe a month) if you keep it steady and soon enough you'll be doing normal push ups (starting back at a low count). You'll be surprised how quickly you can go from 5 to 10, 15, 25, 50 push ups simply by accepting your daily limits and doing them again nonetheless.
1y ago

noduerme 1y ago

I love this DIY method! Sometimes you just know what's best for yourself. I've done something very similar for about 8 years now. Push-ups and crunches (and sometimes burpees). I spent most of my life thin, just because of my lucky metabolism. In high school, people thought I was anorexic even though I ate junk food all the time. I'm someone who hates to break a sweat unless absolutely necessary, who would never go to a gym, and who also works a very sedentary programming job... and everything was just fine until alcohol and age caught up with me in my late 30s. So, I remembered the stupid stuff they had us do in high school gym class. There were actual educational lessons there, right? Push-ups and crunches. I use a Moka Pot to make my coffee in the morning, it takes exactly 9 minutes to boil on my stove. I started off with 30 push-ups and 30 crunches a day, before the pot boiled, before I got out of my underwear. I kept adding a few a day until I was at 100 + 100 (Initially I would take breaks in the push-ups at 25, 50, and 75 - but eventually I could just do 100 without stopping). The results of it were surprisingly good, for something that takes less than 9 minutes of your day. Just a side note about McDonald's -- I've only ever gotten one rancid McDonald's meal in my life, and it was REALLY bad. I almost never eat fast food anymore either, except in a very particular case. The author says: >>When was the last time you heard somebody (including yourself) say they feel better after eating fast food? Me. I have some level of IBS - not debilitating, but enough that I don't want to leave the house sometimes. I also have lived in a lot of countries with questionable food sanitation, although now I'm just in America and eat a lot of Indian and Thai food. Anyway, for whatever reason, if I need to catch a flight in the morning, the sure shot 100% bulletproof way to know that I will not need a bathroom is to eat a Big Mac, nuggets and fries the night before. That meal can somehow completely stop a multi-day IBS episode in its tracks. I don't do it unless I need to, but somehow it completely calms my gut and binds up whatever's in there. I literally do it almost every time before I fly. My home cooking is much more likely to leave me stuck in a bathroom somewhere. Make of it what you will. One other thing - walking. This is what really caused me to lose a lot of weight and get back to within my optimal zone. I am (as reads the bio) an alcoholic. When I get done working at home, I go to a bar. I track my calories, and about 50% of them are alcohol. To motivate myself to walk, I started picking bars that were further away. And then much further away. So if I'm going out for 3 beers, I'll often walk 1.5 miles to the first bar, then have another beer each half-mile on the way back. This makes an astounding difference. You're actually hungry when you get home, still have a light buzz, listened to some interesting podcasts, and you sleep a lot better. All of this is advice from a 45-year-old whose habits are very, very bad - I am not some paragon of health. I smoke like a chimney. I'll probably die young. A little bit of extra struggle goes a long way, though.

solsane 1y ago

Glad to see that Saitama is active on Hacker News!

yetihehe 1y ago

Everybody says "drink a lot of water", but nobody says how much. Often people say that you need at least 2.5L/day. My constant headaches stopped and I'm finally able to lose weight (from 120kg) after I started to drink 4.5L/day. It's hard to keep up with such amount of water, but it looks like it was necessary.

Gud 1y ago
Be careful, you can mess up your kidneys.
justsomehnguy 1y ago
> but nobody says how much Because nobody knows how much do you need. A good indicator is the colour of your #1 and the overall consistency of your #2
- yetihehe 1y ago
  Yeah, but #1 still looked good.

dsign 1y ago

I lost all of my back strength during my startup days, which ended in chronic back pain. Worst, trying to run or even a soft jog would make things worse. The thing that reversed the trend was SUP, which now I do all year round even in frigid waters. Back pain is gone and I can run again. Still trying to lose weight though.

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QuiEgo 1y ago

This was entertaining and super motivational, thanks for sharing! Can you share the final version of the sheet you made? I'm curious what your columns ended up being, in addition to the original push-ups column.

aiiizzz 1y ago

Not to be a downer, but the blog post does not describe much in the change of his life.

chevyharley2 1y ago

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Kate5477 1y ago

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Kate5477 1y ago

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macartain 1y ago

Agree this is very inspiring - I suspect many folks out there might respond to a simple approach like this. I have fallen off several wagons in this regard, Convict Conditioning and the Busy Dad Routine most recently - generally because, although fun and encouraging initially, they are just too much faff from an administrative perspective! I am up for this! One question: do you accrue push-ups during the day in a 'greasing the groove' type approach and then stick in the total at end of day? Or more of a session? Just curious what was successful for you...