William Morgan
A man who set himself the exhausting challenge of doing 50 pull ups and 100 pushups for 30 days in a row has shared how it has transformed him.
Having noticed a decline in his physical fitness and appearance, Youtuber Scott Luu decided to set himself the challenge to see if he could get ripped again by following an intense regimen of pull ups and pushups.
But while doing a set of 100 followed by a set of 50 would be enough to turn most fitness fanatics' arms into jelly, Luu set himself some rules that made the challenge a bit more manageable.
This included that he did not have to do the whole routine in one go, instead breaking it up over the course of the day.
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"As long as I achieved a total of 50 pull ups and 100 pushups all with good form before I [went to] sleep, that was a successful day," Luu shared.
To start the challenge and give himself a sense of what lay ahead of him, the influencer set out to discover what the maximum number of reps of each exercise he could do before getting tired. At first, this was around eight pull ups and 28 pushups.
Luu said: "My plan was to perform the push ups and pullups throughout the day, five different sessions spread out by three to four hours."
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However, as anyone who tried to follow an exercise routine will know, life can often get in the way of our plans and Luu struggled to meet this goal. Instead, he found a more natural rhythm for his body and split the challenge into three sessions per day.
But even this could not make up for just how unprepared his body was for the challenge, with the Youtuber admitting: "After just two days, on the third day we were forced to take a rest day because my body couldn't handle it."
This forced Luu back to the drawing board, with him committing to do 100 pushups and 50 pull ups for four days a week and using the rest of his time to recover. In spite of this disappointment, once he'd conditioned his body in this way for 30 days, he went back to the challenge. This time, there would be no rest days.
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Starting out from day one of the challenge, Luu once again committed to the tiring routine. But after 12 days of successfully completing his sets, his body began to struggle.
"It was really painful to grip the pull up bar," he recalled. "I ended up getting a little internal bleeding on my right hand, under the callous, probably because I was gripping the bar way too tightly, so it made it very very painful."
Luu also experienced frequent pain in his forearms, as well as constant soreness in his chest and lats as he fought to keep up with the challenge.
But as the days went by and his streak continued, he forced himself to carry on and fit in a set of pushups or pull ups whenever he could, including at 3.30am.
"Miraculously, my body began adapting and I felt less pain and soreness," he shared
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He started beating his personal best for pull ups, becoming capable of up to 17 in one set. Luu described how the challenge had made him the strongest he had ever been. By the time the influencer had reached the end of his 30-day challenge, he had realized the most noticeable improvement he had seen from the challenge wasn't even physical.
He explained: "Sometimes you need to push beyond what you think you can do so then you can unleash what you are already capable of doing. I put in the work of strengthening my body so I can physically do it but my mind hasn't caught up to what I'm capable of yet."
Luu added: "It's instilled an unshakable confidence that, even if the challenge is difficult, when things get extremely tough, I can still get it done."