Comment by dvfjsdhgfv
3 years ago
I did this with biking years ago and I don't regret any second of it. It relaxes me in the morning, it does the same in the evening. During warm months it's all pleasure, during colder months it's mostly the way to work and back (or an equivalent in the opposite direction when I WFH).
The only drawback is that although the muscles in the lower part of the body seem like made of steel, the upper part is definitely weaker, so a while ago I started to do pushups as a kind of game: can I ever do 100 pushups in one go? The first step was to make 50 pushups daily and to gradually increase it. I can now do ca. 20 pushups and I'm very proud of it (I could barely do 7 at the beginning).
I also do pushups to balance out climbing, because although climbing works all the muscles fairly well, it over develops the back slightly. Even though I'm pretty anti-gym, i think body weight exercises are great, because you can pretty much do them anywhere at any time and they tend to target a broader range of muscles unlike gym exercises.
The one thing I learned about push-ups recently is how we have a tendency to get tripped up by the measurement fallacy... i mean how else do you measure it other than how many right? The thing is that if you optimise for quantity you will actually end up with bad form and be cheating by using momentum. If you goal is to actually improve your body somehow then you start focusing on form and control, which can be a little bit demoralizing at first because you will no doubt be back squarely in the <10 range, but you will have abs of steel if you keep it up :P
Sounds like great progress. Friendly reminder to also train the back side of your body too. Otherwise, the office work and the pull ups will pull your shoulders forward which can cause problems in the long-run. Given that you got so far with the push ups, I’m sure you can also find a way to do some back work