Push-ups: Enemies to Lovers

 I've been thinking about some of the things we talked about in Augusts I Ho Chuan meeting, specifically what Sifu Brinker was saying about the push-up requirement.

At the beginning of the year this was the requirement that seemed the most daunting. Form reps, sure! I love doing forms! Acts of kindness, awesome! I'm always looking for opportunities to add positive interactions with people! Push-ups, w-we … have to do HOW MANY?! Oh god I can only do like 10 at once, maybe 15 if I'm pushing it. How am I going to be able to do that many!? When am I going to find the time to do that many?! Am I going to injure myself by doing too many too fast? How am I going to do that many in a day, and even more inconceivable how am I going to do that many in a day, everyday for the next year, for the rest of my life?!

But now I can say that the push-up requirement is probably my favorite. I want to emphasize how big of a change this is for me: I used to hate push-ups more than anything else we had to do in kung-fu. Now I often find myself excited to add to my numbers, or missing them on the seventh day off. This complete 180 in opinion made me want to sit down and think about what changed.

I like push-ups because I can always feel my progression. In all other parts of my training I can feel the plateaus and dips but never with my push-ups. Even if I fall back (busy week, injury, etc.), where I can't do as many at once anymore, I can clearly see where I am, and where I am going (I can do x easily, I can make it to y if I push, and I'm striving to get to z). 

I like push-ups because I can feel the tangible result of my efforts in the rest of my kung-fu. I can punch, strike, and block faster and harder. I am stronger because of them and I can feel that difference.

I like push-ups because they give me numerous and highly valuable opportunities in a day to push myself and train my brain that it needs to listen to me and not the other way around. Sometimes I feel like there are only a few big high pressure do-or-die kind of situations in my training (once a year tournament, quarter-annual fitness assessments, etc.) but my pushups lets me get into that mindset almost every single time I go to do them (since the fitness test is just as many push-ups as you can do in one go right at the start of the day, I can exactly replicate those conditions on my own). It lets me train the "push yourself" muscle in my brain way more frequently without having to wait for those big events to come up. (Don't put your knees down yet, just one more, just one more, you're so close to rounding it out keep going, lock your elbows if you have to but don't stop no matter what). My push ups are one of the greatest sources of mental training I have right now. 

I like push-ups because they used to be such a source of shame for me (jeez I'm a blue belt and I still can barely do 10, everyone else is done and I'm still going, maybe if I stop now too no one will notice), but now I only every compare myself to me. I might only be able to do 10, but I can do them with perfect technique, now I can do 20, 30, almost 40 at once. Only looking at my own progression and feeling a sense of pride at what I am able to do now and how far I have come since I started. 

Don't get me wrong, there are lots of times when it's pushing close to midnight and I get a bit overwhelmed at the number of pushups I have to finish for the day, or times when I hate having to stop what I'm doing and set up for another round, but I'm sticking with what I said at the beginning of this post, right now, the push-up requirement is my favorite because everything I have put into it has come back to me at least ten-fold.