So I personally think I do a fair amount of exercise, could probably do a bit more tho. However, I wanted to see what would happen to my body if I tried to do exercise every day for a few weeks. Given I was going overseas soon, this was probably the perfect opportunity to give it a shot!
So for every day until the week of my holiday, my goal is to do at least:
- 30 push ups
- 30 leg raises
- 30 bear claws per arm (idk if this is even what it's called)
- 2min horse stance
- 15 bicep curls per arm (it's a heavy weight ok!!!)
All of these are to be done without breaks within sets. Otherwise a short break between sets is ok.
I chose these exercises because it's a general mix between all the muscle groups so that any gains would be even and all of these focused on strength and endurance rather than burning fat for example.
At the time of writing, I was no longer doing kung fu and also reduced the amount of time I spent rock climbing, so part of this experiment was ensuring I had a baseline strength I was happy with given I wasn't regularly doing intense training.
I also wanted to do this in the odd case where someone stumbles upon it and it also motivates them to do the same. So enjoy :)
Results
| Push ups | Leg raises | Bear claws | Horse stance | Bicep curls | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10/6/25 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 2min | 15 |
| 11/6/25 | 35 | 30 | 30 | 2min | 15 |
| 12/6/25 | 30 | 31 | 30 | 2min | 15 |
| 13/6/25 | rock climbing | ||||
| Weekend | |||||
| Weekend | |||||
| 16/6/25 | 30 | 35 | 30 | 2min | 15 |
| 17/6/25 | Recovery (cardio) | ||||
| 18/6/25 | (sick) | ||||
| 19/6/25 | Rock climbing | ||||
| 20/6/25 | 30 | 32 | 30 | 2min | 15 |
| Weekend | |||||
| Weekend | |||||
| 23/06/25 | 40 | 30 | 30 | 2min11s | 15 |
| 24/06/25 | 40 | 35 | 2min42s | 15 | |
| 25/06/25 | (recovery) | ||||
| 26/06/25 | 35 | 30 | 30 | 3min | 15 |
| 27/06/25 | (rock climbing) | ||||
| Weekend | |||||
| Weekend | |||||
| 30/06/25 | (rock climbing) | ||||
| 1/07/25 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 2m21s | 15 |
| 2/07/25 | (recovery) | ||||
| 3/07/25 | (no energy) | ||||
| 4/07/25 | (ninja warrior) |
Reflection
Doing these exercises were either exceptionally fulfilling or downright agonising.
For example, when I started hitting over 2min in a horse stance, it felt surreal and the strength I had felt so good!
But there were days where my mind was so out of it that I had to force myself to get through it or completely give up.
This made me realise that a lot of what makes up doing exercise is your mental state at the time, and to be truly honest, I don't think I was in a good mental state for the first few weeks. But after working on myself a bit, it became a lot better and felt so much easier.
That said, most of this was done after I finished my 9-5 job for the day which is so exceptionally exhausting (mentally). Although interestingly getting a solid 8 hours of sleep did help on the occasions I was able to.
In the end, I gained about a kilo of muscle and also made my body a lot more leaner. I'm quite happy with this!
To close this out, I just wanted to emphasise how good it feels to just feel strong. Like strong enough to do everything that your body should be able to do, or being able to say yes to your dad asking if you can help move a bunch of cinder blocks in the backyard. It's a feeling of self-confidence and achievement. It's also a skill that you are maintaining and can use it to help others when they need it.
If you think of your body like a car, it's as if you are giving it a nice wash, vacuum and service before taking it out for a spin. You don't need to have a fancy sports car with a turbocharger and rocking speaker system, you just gotta find and curate what you enjoy, hone in on it with all the passion you can give.