Push-Ups

{{Information| |Description= * {{de|Liegestützender Mann in gelben Shorts. Animiert. Verzögerung 0,2 sec}} |Source= * {{de|Eigene Arbeit}} * {{en|Own work}} |Date= * {{de|Tag der Aufnahme: 26.11.2006}} |Author= * {{de|Fotograf: [[User:Frank C. Müller|F

"Push-ups every morning (Ten times!)

 Not just now and then!

 Give that chicken fat back to the chicken

 And don't be chicken again.

 No! Don't be chicken again."

Well, that's the way I remembered it, anyway. Which turns out to be only semi-accurate (big surprise) as (another big surprise) I found a You Tube watcheo which had the whole thing. I also did a little check in with The Wiccans, and found out that "'Chicken Fat' was the theme song for President John F. Kennedy's youth fitness program . . . . " Well, no shit. I thought it was just an odd little thing that appeared on The Bob McAllister Show in Baltimore in the days of my youth. Specifically during the Mike Fury segment, wherein we impressionable young things were told that "An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but an onion a day keeps EVERYbody away!" Oh, yeah. Those were the days.

ANYway . . . it's been a long time since my Push-Up Prime. In fact, it'd been a long time since I did a push-up at all. But a few weeks ago I decided to add them to my exercise routine. First time out I did 5, and it was not easy. And I struggled for awhile with 5 before pushing it up to 7. Which I'm still at, and which is sometimes at the very limits of the possible for me. Other times it's just really hard. And I remembered reading somewhere sometime that the measure of whether or not you were physically fit was whether or not you could do X number of sit-ups. So I decided to go have a look for that. Well, again my memory must have proven faulty, as I was thinking I would find "ten" or something manageable like that. Instead, I found two different ways of looking at push-ups"

Way 1:

A three minute push-up test. You do as many push-ups as you can, resting whenever you want but clock keeps a-running. And then:

< 55 pushups = Below average

55 to 74 pushups = Average

75 to 99 pushups = Good

100 to 110 pushups = Excellent

111 or more = Extraordinary

I didn't like that way at all.

Way 2:

Much more straightforward--age and number of push-ups you can do. For my age group (50 - 59), it said this:

Excellent . . . . . . . .  31

Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25-31

Above Average . . . . 18-24

Average . . . . . . . . . . . 8-17

Below average . . . . . . 4-7

Poor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1-4

Very Poor . . . . . . . . . . 0

That was a bit more to my liking, as it meant that I only had to do one more push-up to make it to Average. Unfortunately it also meant that I had a really long way to go to make it to Above Average. At the moment, I can't imagine being able to do 18 push-ups. (Though back in the day . . . not even a little problem. Sigh.) Good news, though: in three months I'll turn 60, and then 6 - 16 is Average. Which at least is a little bit better, right?

Oh, man, now I'm thinking hard about Mike Fury and The Bob McAllister Show. I guess you know you're getting old when you start to long for and / or re-embrace the things that you loved as a child, then decided were bullshit for fifty years or so.