Doing 1000 push-ups a day

👶🏼 Present self meets 18-year-old self

I wonder what my 18-year-old self would have said to my "1000 push-ups a day challenge"?

Lukas, that's too much cardio. You'll lose muscle doing that. Eat more, do fewer reps. - 18-year-old-Lukas

When I look at old pictures from when I was 20 years old, I feel a sense of pride.

Daily training, preparing meals, eating meals, etc. took a lot of time but also brought restrictions. I was trying not to burn too many calories. I had to eat tons of food just to maintain weight.

The gym was my second home. 🌈

On vacation, a gym within 1km from my hotel and an All You Can Eat Buffet were requirements I ticked in my "hotel search filter". lol

This phase also came to an end. Latest when I ran a marathon. Now I feel a lot better in my body and can go on holiday without dumbbells in my luggage. Cardio is no longer a cuss word 😉

I learned how important time and energy management is.

⏲ Time management.

Time management because some days it's just not possible to get everything done that you set out to do.

The professor's simple trick, that you should first put big stones, second pebbles, and finally sand in a glass, does not work. Read more in one of my favorite books on time management, Four Thousand Weeks: The smash-hit Sunday Times bestseller by Oliver Burkeman.

There are just too many big rocks that the glass is overflowing. That's exactly how it was for me this Sunday.

I attended and finally completed my NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) trainer training from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.

Afterward, I went to the gym with a good friend, and we had dinner at my place. I did the first 120 pushups in the morning and the rest in the evening at the gym. Regarding the timing, my conclusion is:

Since you can sometimes lose track after a few hundred push-ups, I resorted to pen and paper.

🔋 Energy management

Energy management is important because no matter how effective your time management, if you don't have energy, every task feels though to complete.

Especially sleep, a good diet, and exercise play an essential role. If you want to know more feel free to listen to my podcast episode about sleep. I talk about top tips I tested to fall asleep within a few minutes.

In the podcast episode about nutrition, I share exciting insights on brain food.

📆 I learned about energy allocation.

I realized that I shouldn't immediately start doing 20 pushups without rest.

When I do, I reach my limit too quickly, and my muscles are exhausted. I agreed with myself on 10 pushups and thus found a good balance between rest and exercise.

I know it looks like I'm doing one pushup at a time. However, I swear there were at least two. 😜

How many did I actually manage to do? When I managed just over 500 push-ups, I fell into bed. 😴

If you want to read more about physical and mental fitness, I recommend checking out the section on mindset.