100 Squats a Day

A few months ago, my sister, Katie, asked me if I wanted to do 100 squats a day for 30 days. She had seen video online and wanted to try it to see what would happen. I said sure, but wasn't that committed. And, I never really heard anything more about it from her. Several weeks later, I asked her how the 100 squats a day program was going, and she said that she had started it, but never followed through long-term. We talked about it a bit, agreed to be each other's accountability partner, and decided to start May 1st. And that is how our "100 Squats a Day for the Month of May" began!

I've never really done squats, and I'm not sure Katie has either. Neither one of us are experts on the correct form and method. I knew that I should try and keep my back straight, though. And, I thought I was supposed to hold my arms straight out in front of me. Also, the slower, more controlled the squat, the more of a muscle workout. At least, that was my theory and method. I'm not sure what Katie's method/theory was- we never actually talked about how to do squats when planning this. We did end up inviting the Facebook public to join us on this squatting adventure, but I believe only one person did: another sister, Sally.

For the first week, I think Katie and I both did pretty well at keeping up with our 100 squats each day. And, I know that Sally was doing them whenever she had a spare moment - even in the library bathroom as she was waiting on her kids piano lessons to finish! The first several days, even though I tried to break up the 100 into sets of 20 or 25, my legs felt like jelly after each set. I felt a bit like an out of shape weakling working muscles that I've never really worked on before. I never heard Katie or Sally mention any jelly legs; they probably have better muscles going than I. I also found that my upper back would start to ache while doing squats. I figured that I was doing something wrong, or else needed to work on some
back muscle building. At some point, I looked up some videos of proper squats and saw that people were not holding their arms straight out in front of them. Instead, they were holding their arms, elbows bent, and clasped in front of them. When I adopted that technique in my squat form, the back pain went away.

The next two weeks, we continued keeping up with our squats pretty well each day. Usually we, Katie and I, would send a text message reporting our count in the evening. I started not remembering, or making the time, to do my squats in small sets throughout the day and would end up having to do all 100 at 11:30pm most nights. I occasionally did some while on my break at work, but not very regularly. The longer the month has gone, the more squats I could do in a set. I remember that the first time I could do 50 in a row without dying, I was pretty proud and let Katie know! Since then, there have been a few late nights of doing 90 in one set just to try and get them finished before midnight.

My sister, Miriam, was kind of poking fun at me for my squat program and at one point said that she needed to see proof that it was actually happening. I figured out how to record a video one day, and recorded a set of 50 squats for her. Usually, Little Pumpkin does squats with me and I was hoping to catch that on the video, too. That day that I recorded the video though, she chose to just be my "assistant." You can view the video at this link if you wish to see it.

There are only a few days left in May and, if we are able to continue our practice to the end, Katie and I will have done 3,100 squats each. I'm not quite sure what all the effects of squatting are, but I can definitely tell that I have more muscle in my legs! I have not really noticed any other effects, and as Katie said, we definitely didn't lose any weight with this program! But, I do think it was good for us to do, and to create our little "accountability" system for exercise.

I don't think that we will continue with 100 squats per day after May. But, it would be preferable to continue a smaller number of squats in our exercise routine, if we can come up with one. Potentially, if we add a new exercise to focus on each month, and maintain a small set of each past exercise, we could build into a quick, easy, yet beneficial exercise routine with good variety. We have briefly talked about what exercise to do in June. Two ideas that we have had are push-ups (another area in that I am very weak!) and 3 minute planks. If you were to join us on our little exercise building program, what quick exercise would you be willing to do? And, even if you aren't going to join us on our exercise journey, feel free to give us some new ideas!