So I’ve completed week one on the hundred pushups plan. It was pretty hard to finish. But now I get two days of rest. I’ve been pretty sore all week, so the two day break will be nice. Today’s pushups were complicated by two things:
1) I got a pull up bar and may have overdone it on the upper body.
2) I’m a little wheezy today–I’ve been coughing and I’m a little short of breath. Maybe getting a cold?
Anyway, the two day break will be nice. We’ll see how it goes on Sunday!
Well, I did my first push-ups work out from HundredPushups.com yesterday. No biggie. It wasn’t too hard, and I was wondering if it would be enough to increase my stamina. However, today my pecs are pretty sore, so even though the workout didn’t seem too difficult at the time, it must have done something!
A few months ago I stumbled across the website 100 Pushups. I thought, hey, that would be fun to try. Now that it’s January and I’m supposed to have some kind of goal for the year, I’m going to give it a shot. It should take me six weeks. I will report back at the end of each week to share my progress. If I make it, I will post a video of me doing my 100. Wish me luck!
Okay. I got this acupressure book: Acupressure’s Potent Points by Michael Reed Gach. I read about it on
Acupuncture chart from China around 1340
another website and figured I’d give acupressure a try. I’ve always wanted to try acupuncture, but it’s kind of expensive and I’m pretty skeptical about its efficacy. Still, I was excited to give it a try.
It came in the mail a couple days later and I flipped through it during the evening. The book basically gives you specific points on your body (potent points) to press or stimulate in order to relieve a specific ailment. The book covers things like headaches and indigestion, but also emotional woes. It even has a potent point routine to relieve hangovers! I usually don’t sleep very well, so before bed, I decided to try the recommended points for a good night’s sleep. The points were located on the back, wrist, neck, head, and ankle. It took me about 15 minutes to go through them all.
Right away my skepticism about acupressure started to vanish. While pressing one of the sets of potent points (located on the back of my head), my sinuses sprung open. They weren’t overly swollen, so I hadn’t really noticed that I was stuffed up, but when they opened up I sure did. I kind of chuckled and wondered if the book listed that point in the cold and flu section. Pressing another point made me yawn a couple of times. Overall I didn’t notice much else except that I was maybe a bit more relaxed. But I did sleep pretty well. I had to get up to use the bathroom, which would usually ruin my night. But I remained really groggy the whole time and fell right back asleep. I felt the routine had been pretty successful, although I wasn’t quite ready to jump on the bandwagon. Sometimes I do sleep pretty well.
My next opportunity to try out acupressure came a few days later when I got a headache. It was coming on pretty fast and I took some Excedrin Migraine, because I knew it was going to be a doozy. But immediately after taking them, I kicked myself for not trying acupressure first. Then I decided to do it anyway because it would take twenty minutes for the pills to kick in anyway. I blew through the routine pretty quick, and the headache was greatly reduced. It wasn’t completely gone, but mostly. And I have no way to know how long it would have stayed mostly gone, because I took pills. Again, I was surprised, but not completely sold.
Then today I had to clean out my mouse’s cage. Now, I have asthma, and I’m allergic to mice, so this operation normally ends with me covered in hives and wheezing up a storm. So my normal routine is to clean the cage, pop a few hits off my inhaler, and then take a shower and change my clothes. Today, I decided I would try the acupressure routine for asthma and see if it helped at all. The answer is a resounding YES!
DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A DOCTOR. THIS WORKED FOR ME. IT MAY NOT WORK FOR EVERYONE.
So I went through the routine listed in the book, which included points on my wrist and thumb, leg, chest, and shoulders. I noticed my wheezing subsiding some as I went through the whole routine, and by the time I was done, my breathing was much improved. The wheezing wasn’t completely gone, but I didn’t feel like I needed my inhaler. By the time I finished up with my shower and got dressed, my breathing was completely normal. That was a good five hours ago, and the lungs are still completely clear. Unfreakin’ believable!! I’m sort of bowled over by the experience. I bought the book expecting the stuff not to work, or to only work a little bit. I kind of want to shell out some money for acupuncture to see if I can work on more permanent issues. But no rush. I’ll stick with this book a little longer. For anyone interested in acupressure I’d recommend giving the book a try. I wish there was a little more explanation of why the stuff works, but this book is all practical, so there’s very little (maybe 10 pages or so) that isn’t part of the potent points routines. Still, it was a well-spent twelve bucks.
