My goal WAS to do 50 pushups every day for August 2023. It has been one week since I completed this challenge. I have done at least 50 pushups a day past the 31-day challenge. On day 36 (yesterday) I did 100 pushups! Then I took a hot bath and had to ice up my arm.
Comparing Day 1 to Day 31
Today I compare what my 1st day of pushups looked like up against my 31st day.
Here are the main points I make in this video:
(I am sorry they are not composed as learning objectives! HAHA!)
In the video, I fail to mention that this 50 pushups a day challenge not only made me commit to holding myself accountable but I was also motivated me to build other skills.
For example, I wanted a logo for my blog but have not been very active in developing it. The energy generated from this project motivated me to sketch out my logo, scan it in, and then design a PNG file in Adobe Illustrator with a transparent background. I actually recorded my screen while designing my logo and plan to release that video next week. Once I got the ball rolling on the pushups, other projects didn’t seem as daunting as they did before. The first step is the most difficult.
Not Too Late to Give to the Children!
I did more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
I am happy to say that I did 50 (or more) pushups every day for August 2023. It was not as easy as I thought it would be to VLOG about 50 pushups for 31 days straight.
This all takes way more time than it looks like. There were times when my family missed me and I had to step away from this to tend to them. I learned a lot from this challenge and I am proud to say that I completed it. It forced me to learn how to generate “PNG” files with a transparent background and even apply those custom artifacts over video footage. I am at a different place than I was 31 days ago, (mostly I am just better at doing pushups. HA! 555+) but this has forced me to grow in more ways than one and for that, I am very grateful. Consistency is not easy but once it becomes a habit it is not difficult either. I will miss this daily grind, but at the same time, I am so glad it is over!
My goal WAS to do 50 pushups every day for August 2023. My stretch goal STILL IS to do 50 quality pushups in a single set. Today I did two higher-quality sets of 25 pushups, for only 50 quality pushups in total! I think this is the best approach overall to do an actual set of 50 by the end of 2023.
I did a 5-minute breath work session between the two sets as preparation and a reset for the second set of 25 pushups. This video is available to view after the two sets of pushups. In this video, I do the basic 4-count in, 4-count hold, and 4-count exhale. Then when that feels comfortable I up it to 8-counts for all three. Normally I would do a 4 or 8-count hold after the exhale but having just done pushups and preparing to do more pushups I do not tend to hold on the exhale very often.
I have done more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
I am feeling better today than I did yesterday. It got down to 65 degrees here in Saint Louis, MO so I decided to do the pushups outside. I am trying to trim the videos down shorter now so there is less dead time and less talking time.
My goal is to do 50 pushups every day for August 2023. My stretch goal is to do 50 quality pushups in a single set. Today I did two higher-quality sets of 25 pushups, for only 50 quality pushups in total! I think this is the best approach overall to do an actual set of 50 by the end of August.
I did a 5-minute breath work session between the two sets, which is available to view after the two sets of pushups. In this video, I do the basic 4-count in, 4-count hold, and 4-count exhale. Then when that feels comfortable I up it to 8-counts for all three. Normally I would do a 4 or 8-count hold after the exhale but having just done pushups and preparing to do more pushups I do not tend to hold on the exhale.
I’m Doing more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
I am not feeling very well today. In this video, I declare, “That is the thing about consistency, you still show up even when you are not feeling well. I am going to give my 100% even though I don’t have 100% to give. I am going to give my full 83%.) My kids both got Hand Foot and Mought Virus over the weekend, and as our Nurse Practitioner warned, there is now a strain that adults get. Maybe it is the offspring of the Omnichrom Carona 19 virus. I am not pro-vax or anti-vax.
It seems to me like just getting the virus is a vaccination in its own way. Probably more risky than a vaccination but it’s cheaper! and I love a good value! Still, I’d rather just get a vaccine if I can afford it and it doesn’t make me sick. So, now that I have polarized my reader base, let’s move forward to the video where I try to do pushups even though I am not very fit and I am sick!
My goal is to do 50 pushups every day for August 2023. My stretch goal is to do 50 quality pushups in a single set. Today I did two higher-quality sets of 25 pushups, for only 50 quality pushups in total! I think this is the best approach overall to do an actual set of 50 by the end of August.
I did a 5-minute breath work session between the two sets, which is available to view after the two sets of pushups. In this video, I do the basic 4-count in, 4-count hold, and 4-count exhale. Then when that feels comfortable I up it to 8-counts for all three. Normally I would do a 4 or 8-count hold after the exhale but having just done pushups and preparing to do more pushups I do not tend to hold on the exhale.
Please Donate to The Children
I’m Doing more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
It was especially nice outside so I decided to do my daily 50 pushups on the deck behind our house. It was windy and I got a lot of pops and clicks on my microphone. I had the foam wind guard on my mic so I am wondering if it was the wind that caused that. I have never had that issue before.
My goal is to do 50 pushups every day for August 2023. My stretch goal is to do 50 quality pushups in a single set. Today I did two higher-quality sets of 25 pushups, for only 50 quality pushups in total! I think this is the best approach overall to do an actual set of 50 by the end of August.
I did a 5-minute breathwork session between the two sets, which is available to view after the two sets of pushups. In this video, I do the basic 4-count in, 4-count hold, and 4-count exhale. Then when that feels comfortable I up it to 8-counts for all three. Normally I would do a 4 or 8-count hold after the exhale but having just done pushups and preparing to do more pushups I do not tend to hold on to the exhale.
In this video, I brought my small digital kitchen timer to help time the breathwork. I have been using my laptops for timers but that is cumbersome and a few times I have left the computer in random spots in the house and then not known where it was. I recall my time at Wat Chom Thong, in Thailand’s Chiang Mai province where I did a 10-day Vippisana Meditation retreat. We used timers like these at that meditation center. More information about that center here: https://northernvipassana.org/en/
After the breathwork, I place my hands together and raise them to my forehead, and as I do that the church across the pasture rang its bell for 2 PM. I was not anticipating that but for some reason it tickled me. I went on a tangent about how small moments of coincidence or magic like that should be allowed to make us happy. All things are connected in ways we can not understand. I go on to claim that the world is a single organism and we are like the microbes living in that organism. I then made a statement that there are more bacteria in the human body than human cells, but I edited that part out because I looked it up and technically it is not true. If you take into account the red blood cells, the human body is 50% bacteria and 50% human cells. If you think about that, that’s still incredible. The mass of the bacteria is smaller than human cells, so the mass is not 50/50 but the number of human cells to bacteria is estimated to be about half half.
Today again was a very rough day of doing 50 push-ups a day for Saint Jude. I make a good point in this video that you know if I was just healthier and if I had been doing this since I was young, this would be easy. I then get on my soapbox and preach how it’s never too late to start.
I’m going to be honest my cheat day has turned sort of into a cheat weekend. Saturday night, I had a couple beers, and a glass of wine and didn’t eat very well (Pizza, ice cream, Peach cocktails, etc.).
Normally, this really wouldn’t affect push-ups the next day, but since I am old, and I have been eating, very healthily and not drinking alcohol, I can really tell the difference when I do add these things back into my routine. You will notice that in the second set, my kids come down to help in my first set. You can hear them screaming upstairs in the bathtub, but please don’t worry my wife was watching them.
I did a 5-minute breath work session between the two sets, which is available to view after the two sets of pushups. In this video, I do the basic 4-count in, 4-count hold, and 4-count exhale. Then when that feels comfortable I up it to 8-counts for all three. Normally I would do a 4 or 8-count hold after the exhale but having just done pushups and preparing to do more pushups I do not tend to hold on the exhale. In this video, I didn’t do the full 5-minute breathwork because I was very pressed for time.
I am doing 50 pushups a day for August 2023. I am now including all my breathwork in these daily video updates and owning the fact that this is a form of meditation. I am sharing my experience with the practice and the benefits I receive from it.
I’m Doing more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
I am doing 50 pushups a day for August 2023. My goal is to do 50 pushups every day for August 2023.
I completed an iteration of my new logo so I added that to this video.
This is my first time using a PNG file with a transparent background of a logo I designed over video. So, all pretty exciting for me on this side of things… I am feeling incredibly good about it. I also found some very good open-source music from the Psych Rock group Kruingbin for the breathwork session today.
I did a 5-minute breath work session between the two sets, which is available to view after the two sets of pushups. In this video, I do the basic 4-count in, 4-count hold, and 4-count exhale. Then when that feels comfortable I up it to 8-counts for all three. Normally I would do a 4 or 8-count hold after the exhale but having just done pushups and preparing to do more pushups I do not tend to hold on the exhale.
I’m Doing more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
Yesterday I mentioned in my blog that as I am creating videos to post on my Vlog of my doing my 50 pushups a day for St. Jude, my camera on my phone keeps crashing or shutting down. Sometimes this happens when an alarm goes off, but other times I’m not sure if it crashed or if I failed to hit record.
Last night I went to bed asking myself, “How can I solve this issue without buying a stand-alone camera or a new phone that I only use for making these videos?” … I really like how my phone connects with iCloud and then later the videos are just on my computer or easily available for download on the cloud web page. (That reminds me I need to delete all that raw video that I have processed and posted on YouTube.com)
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
I have spoken about this book before and I will speak about it again.
The method of this book is asking yourself a question a few times before you go to bed. Then, have a good long night’s sleep, (or not, I mean that is not as good but you do you.) […On the side, hey you should really prioritize your sleep. No, seriously, sleep cures stress and stress kills you.] While you sleep your subconscious mind works through the details and provides you with the best possible solution or solutions based on what you know and remember. Really you are tapping deep into your subconscious, so you really are using the power of things you don’t know that you know. The book gets even deeper still and basically labels this as an unlimited resource not dissimilar from getting messages from “The God”. Honestly, if you adhere to the research and proof of the Collective-Subconscious then this really isn’t that far-fetched.
Ask yourself a question a few times before you go to bed. Ask your subconscious to solve the problem. You will have solutions when you wake up.
So, when I woke up I was staggering around my bathroom in the dark. I hadn’t had any coffee yet and I was going to brew a cup. Then I realized I had an idea. When I record I could simply put the phone in airplane mode. That would disable all the phone calls, text messages, and alerts. I am not completely convinced it will disable the alarms set, (which really do cause the biggest problem), but there is only one way to try it out and that is to test it. Today was Saturday so Science failed for today… HA! but Monday isn’t that far away.
Also, I could not do my fucking pushups when it is time to take my son to school … …so there is that. [Com’on Improvement Dave. Get it together… Seriously! Improve, make a better plan…that’s like your thing. When it is time to take your kid to school don’t do pushups and record them with your phone, and post them to YouTube.com]
So, there you have it. It is not complicated, but it works every time if you take it seriously. Right before you sleep ask yourself the same question over and over. Meditate on what it is and what you know about it. Then fall asleep.
I made the mistake of looking at YouTube on my phone right before recording this. The YouTube Channel for Improvement Dave was reporting zero traffic on my phone. So, I recorded my video with the sub-context of “nobody watches any of my videos. This is futile. I have to be consistent anyway.” Now that I have had a moment, I logged in on my laptop I see that people are watching the videos and..
SHAT! I got a few likes. Not the reason I am doing any of this, this is mostly practice for me. This is about me being consistent. I am posting for the sake of consistintly posting. However, the main point of this is to hold myself accountable for doing the work. If I was not posting these videos I would have stopped doint the 50 pushups a day, and that is the point. Still, I was hoping that someone had at least watched a single video! Funny how our minds react so quickly on such a visceral level to people paying any attention to our work. I know that I am insignificant in the universe especially when you add the 4th dimension of time… but it still burned like hell.
Burned like hellfire.
Knocked Me Off My Game
What is especially interesting to me is on this day when I felt creating was futile my production was absolute garbage. I failed to record the preparation. I also failed to record Set 1. and Set 2 was cut in half. Was this a user error or were these alarms that popped up on my iPhone? Or was it both? I do not know. I do know that I should stop using my phone, which I also use in my life, to generate this content.
What is all this, Anyway?
I am doing 50 pushups a day for August 2023. My goal is to do 50 pushups every day for August 2023. My stretch goal is to do 50 quality pushups in a single set. Today I did two higher-quality sets of 25 pushups, for only 50 quality pushups in total! I think this is the best approach overall to do an actual set of 50 by the end of August.
I did a 5-minute breath work session between the two sets, which my iPhone filed to capture. In this breathework session, I did the basic 4-count in, 4-count hold, and 4-count exhale. Then when that feels comfortable I up it to 8-counts for all three. Normally I would do a 4 or 8-count hold after the exhale but having just done pushups and preparing to do more pushups I do not tend to hold on the exhale.
I’m Doing more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
I am doing 50 pushups a day for August 2023. My goal is to do 50 pushups in a single set. Today I did two higher-quality sets of 25 pushups, for only 50 quality pushups in total! I think this is the best approach overall to do an actual set of 50 by the end of August.
In this video, I share that we had a recent death in the family. This caused some truncated schedules, so I got straight to work. I do not waste the opportunity to remind us that we should all be grateful for the lives and loved ones that we have. Give your loved ones an extra hug or phone call, tell them you love them all the time, and don’t forget to be thankful for what you have.
I did a 5-minute breath work session between the two sets, which is available to view after the two sets of pushups. In this video, I do the basic 4-count in, 4-count hold, and 4-count exhale. Then when that feels comfortable I up it to 8-counts for all three. Normally I would do a 4 or 8-count hold after the exhale but having just done pushups and preparing to do more pushups I do not tend to hold on the exhale. You will notice that in this video the breathwork is cut short. An alarm actually goes off on my phone turning off the video recording. I would say this is both bad and good because the alarm is to remind me to take my son to school, which is a top priority. However, on this specific day, he asked to attend the funeral we had for a family member, so the alarm was not critical. It still reminded me I have things to do today so start PUSHING UP DAVE!
I’m Doing more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
his is David Kolmer for Improvement Dave Hello you’re watching Improvement Dave This is David Kolmer with Improvement Dave this is day 23 from my understanding I do have my new microphone working so you might notice a difference in sound quality if you’re watching these back to back I have a feeling maybe people aren’t watching them back to back but just so you know I got a new mic so that’s cool I’m gonna go ahead and do 25 push-ups for the first set if I can do a little bit more that’s great if not well I’ll still get up to 50 in one day and all of us will get to heaven on time set one
thank you [Music]
okay
n=Not terrible right had a few pauses not too bad pretty good form As I said I have a lot to do today I had a lot going on today so fresh breakfast and added carbs back into my diet I was only eating ketogenic just fat and vegetables and fruits so I added carbohydrates back in because of these push-ups and I just ate like two pretty good sized waffles about 30 minutes ago and ideally I would have waited an hour or two but you know my privilege has been diminished today because I have a funeral to go to so rid of passing in the family
so it’s kind of a sad day
Okay so the breath work was diminished because I had another alarm go off it’s time to take my son to school so I need to knock these 25 push-ups out as fast as I can and then get things moving
whatever [Music]
oh that was the end of the set too it was 50 push-ups total thanks so much for tuning in this is Improvement Dave and today I’m just reflecting on the fragility for agility of life and being thankful that we still have life cherishing the moments that we do have together and just making sure that we’re making the most of it and being thankful for what we have awesome thank you so much. see you down the line [Music]
thank you
Okay I just finished set one I’m gonna set a timer for five minutes and do some simple breath work here just to calm myself down and put some oxygen back into my system I said Almost electrolytes we should drink some water I mean it’s a sign right
This is just water
systems telling me telling me that I’m thirsty
Freudian slips speaking very well today
Music
Music by RoyaltyFreeMusic Nver Avetyan from Pixabay Technology Dubstep
Music by John_Kensy_Music from Pixabay Mindfulness Relaxation & Meditation Music
Music by To Hot to Play, Lobo Loco, Free Music Archive (CC)
