The Day of the Year Fitness Challenge

I was thinking about how to kick off the year with a bit more consistency in my fitness. I'm definitely not at peak fitness right now, so I wanted something that scales. I hit on this idea: The Day of the Year Challenge. The logic is simple - whatever the day of the year is, that's your number. Today is January 1st, so the number is 1. By December 31st, the number is 365.

You don't need a 2-hour gym session to start building a habit. Or maybe you've read Atomic Habits and know this already - it's all about those small wins.

#The original plan: pushups

Initially, I was going to do pushups. I figured starting at 1 and ending at 365 would be a solid way to build strength. But then I started doing the math on it:

• Doing 300+ pushups every single day by December is a massive load on the shoulders and elbows.
• Since I'm starting from a low baseline, jumping into high-volume daily pushups is a recipe for an injury that would side-line me by March.
• Muscles need rest, and pushups are taxing when you do them every day without a break.

#The pivot: skipping and sit-ups

I decided to switch to skipping. It's great cardio, but doing 1 "skip" felt a bit useless. So, for me, the number represents seconds.

• Today: 1 second of skipping.
• Dec 31st: 365 seconds (just over 6 minutes).

I mentioned this to my wife, Tiani, and she thought it sounded like a cool idea, but she decided to join in a bit differently. She's not a fan of the rope, so she's going to do sit-ups, and for her, the number is the actual count.

• Today: 1 sit-up.
• Dec 31st: 365 sit-ups.

#How it's going to work

To keep us honest and stop us from just going through the motions, we've added a small penalty for stopping mid-set.

#The rules

• Gordon (Skipping): If I trip on the rope or stop before my time is up, I add a 10-second penalty to the total for that day.
• Tiani (Sit-ups): If she pauses or breaks her set, she adds 5 extra reps to her total.
• The streak: If we miss a day, we have to back-fill the missed day's numbers on top of the current day's count.

It's a small enough start that there's no excuse to skip it, but the numbers will get real fast. I'll post updates as the month goes on.