Hi everyone! New here, looking to take on a new challenge

[Eakin]

Hello, fellow nerdy fitness buffs! I'm a NJ based guy, in reasonably good shape already with not-entirely-horrible exercise and nutrition habits. About two years ago I trained for and ran a half marathon, had a blast and have been trying to stay fit since and now I want to get a little more serious about it, shed about 5 more pounds of fat, and bulk up a little bit through strength training. Not that I want to look like a 'roided out mutant, but a little more definition would be nice.

I stumbled upon NF earlier today, and from what I've already read I can already tell I'll be sticking around (and I still have a dozen open tabs worth of past articles to get into). I was reading an article about a 6 week challenge to do 1000 of an exercise in 6 weeks. When it suggested push ups my initial thought was "Pfft, I could probably 1000 push ups in ONE week."* Then I thought "Hey, I bet I actually COULD do 1000 push ups in a single week!" and decided, why not?

I'm hoping to start this pretty soon, the only problem is to find 7 consecutive days in which I'm not already booked with fitness related activities. I'm travelling this week, and next weekend I'll be meeting my brother to go skiing for a couple days, so I want to keep hammering away at my legs to prepare myself for that. My current level of push up aptitude is the ability to do sets of 30/30/until I can't, which usually ends up being 70-80 total. I was wondering if any of you had suggestions on how to structure the challenge so I incorporate some recovery days where I don't do any.

Also it's rare for me to go 7 days without meeting my sister to work out at the rock climbing gym. I doubt it'll be a problem since that's mainly a back/biceps/forearm sort of exercise but I assume 2 hours climbing will sap my energy a little for that day.

Any advice/encouragement would be appreciated.

*Oh, and I don't want to be dismissive of anyone whose goal IS to do 1000 push ups in 6 weeks. If that's where you are and you're pushing yourself to achieve it then more power to you!

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

Welcome, I'm from Philly and currently in Morris County!

I'm at about the same level of pushups as you, or I was when I stopped paying attention to them. If your goal is purely the number, I'd say don't do more than 1 set at a time. Drop and do 30 every hour (I forget what that type of working out is called, it's got a name though) Throughout the day. You should be able to get 250 a day I would think.

[Eakin]

Crazy, I'm right in Morristown myself, at least for the short term.

Yeah, the number 1000 was kinda arbitrary. Maybe I should boost it to a nice round number like 1024 [/xkcd]

I previously crapped out of the Hundred Pushups Challenge, not my proudest moment but I did make some progress while I was doing it. Weeks 5 and 6 were just too big a jump for me.

http://hundredpushups.com/index.html

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

That's the program I was doing too. I got to sets of Mid 30's and I dropped out foot to pursue other workouts. I do wanna pick it up again, just not on a daily basis. Maybe a non lifting day thing or something.