Watch What Happened When This Couple Did Pushups Every Day for 100 Days

Philip Ellis

July 15, 2020 1:28 PM

Doing 100 pushups for 30 days has become a popular fitness challenge on YouTube, but a commonly cited drawback of this workout is that repetition without recovery or progression doesn't yield the best results. When Dani and Basia (who make videos as the Dragons Warriors ) decided to try their own pushup challenge, they instituted a timeframe of 100 days, and introduced a couple of important caveats.

This Couple Did Pushups Every Day for 100 Days

First of all, they set themselves the goal of working up to 100 pushups, rather than starting out with that number. "I actually hate pushups, because they were always difficult for me, I never had strong arms," says Basia. "The challenge here is to commit to the 100 days, we're not committing to a number of pushups."

They ensured that they were exhibiting proper form on each and every rep, including full extension of the arms at the upper end of the rep, and full range of motion at the lower end. They also incorporated recovery periods into the challenge, breaking each week down into 3 consecutive days of pushups, a rest day, then 2 days of pushups, and 1 final rest day before starting over the following week.

Dani was slowly and surely able to improve his rep count throughout the challenge, starting at 3 sets of 12 pushups per day, and finally reaching the goal of 100 pushups at around the 70-day mark, which he completed in 4 sets of 25. Basia, meanwhile, started out doing 3 sets of 5 pushups at the very beginning of the 100 days, and was then gradually able to increase her max until she was doing 4 sets of 15.

"The truth is, I feel much better with my abs," says Basia. "I don't think my physique changed so much, a little bit, my biceps and triceps you can see it, but now what I really notice is my ab strength." She adds that 100 days of pushups also helped her core strength and performance in other bodyweight exercises like the handstand and pullup.

"My chest feels hard and my arms grew a bit, but not as much as I was expecting," says Dani. "Of course you always think that after 100 days you're gonna grow so much, but we didn't use a special diet... and we just did pushups, no extra weight. We didn't have very big physical results, but I think that mentally, and really in strength, I feel stronger for sure."

Philip Ellis