Yes, it’s true.  I am already fail­ing to accom­plish my 2011 fit­ness goals.  I blame part of it on my new job.  I am out of the house before 7:00 a.m. each morn­ing.  Big deal, right?  A lot of you read­ing this could be out the door at 5:00 a.m., I am sure.  I also get home between 7:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. depend­ing on traf­fic.  It takes rough­ly an hour to get too and from work, assum­ing there is not an acci­dent or traf­fic on the NJ Turn­pike or the NJ Park­way.  By the time I get home from work, I am men­tal­ly exhaust­ed.  I have been feed­ing from a fire hose of infor­ma­tion over the past 45 days. Being new can some­times suck, because it sim­ply eats up a lot of time in the begin­ning.  Because of this, my com­mit­ment to get to the gym has, well, been non-com­mit­tal at best.  I have not been able to drag my sor­ry ass there at least once.  Between being tired and not want­i­ng to go back out in the sub 25 degree weath­er, I just can­not get there.  Call me weak.

That said, I was vis­it­ing with a friend of mine last week at his home while trav­el­ing on busi­ness.  I trav­el with a vari­a­tion of the Per­fect Push-up when I am on the road for work.  At the end of the day, it is a good quick upper body work­out.  I use them at home as well.  Again, I’m still not mak­ing it to the gym.  So, while vis­it­ing with my friend, he showed me a pro­gram he was going to start at home before he start­ed on P90X.

The pro­gram was called “the hun­dred push ups train­ing pro­gram.”  It is much more than a 100 push ups pro­gram, how­ev­er.  It is a sev­en week pro­gram that gets you on the way to build­ing upper body strength.  The Web­site links off to “the two hun­dred sit-ups train­ing pro­gram,” “the two hun­dred squats train­ing pro­gram,” and final­ly “the fifty pull-ups train­ing pro­gram.”  Now, don’t get all in a bunch, yet.  The pro­grams start off slow­ly, and don’t take much time…  They seem to prime you, and work you up to the 50, 100, and 200 reps sets over about sev­en weeks.  This I think I can do.  It looks a lot like a pro­gram that both works you for strength, mul­ti­ple mus­cle groups, and car­dio simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.  It also looks like that if you have 15 or 20 min­utes in the begin­ning of the pro­gram, you could do this at home, with the excep­tion of the pull-up pro­gram.  How­ev­er, after watch­ing the P90X pro­gram, I think I can buy a Pull-up bar, and a stool to help me assist my pull-up until I can strength­en my biceps and back enough to lift myself the way they indi­cate you should be able to.

As I men­tioned, this is a pro­gram I think I can han­dle when I get home from work or get up ear­ly in the morn­ing before I get ready for work.  I have done all of these things in the past, and any activ­i­ty at all will be bet­ter than none.  A body in motion and all that stuff.  So, if you suf­fer from the win­ter blahs and/or you just can­not make it to the gym, this may work for you.  Take a look and give it a shot:

• the hun­dred push ups train­ing pro­gram
• the two hun­dred sit-ups train­ing pro­gram
• the two hun­dred squats train­ing pro­gram
• the fifty pull-ups train­ing pro­gram

They even have a log­ging tool and iPhone apps that you can down­load with links on the web­sites above.

Wish me luck.  I’ll update every­one in three weeks, about half way through the program(s).