The 400 Challenge - Round 3!

So, the 400 hundred challenge, Again. Obviously the goal here is to do 400 reps, but the real goal is to beat ones own time every time around. This challenge is one of the benchmarks set out by Jeff Caveliere to measure your progress throughout the program.

After Day one of Week three, this is what I wrote in my journal; "Started week four of Athlene X today with the 400 challenge. 100 push ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 body weight squats and 100 inverted rows in 16min 25 secs. I did it with 4 sets of 15 which brought me to 60 reps then I switched to sets of 10 reps for the remaining 4 sets."

Jeff recommends you complete this within 17 minutes in order to move onto phase two but gives you another chance to beat your time on the Friday of week four.

Day 5, Week Four; "I hit the gym this morning and did the 400 challenge in 13 minutes 38 seconds. That's 2 minutes 46 seconds quicker than Mondays time! I struggled with some of the reps in the push ups and inverted rows towards the end but I didn't count any reps that the form wasn't good enough so overall pretty happy. That's the last day of the first phase! Onto phase two on Monday. Week 5! My second tub of RX2 should be here by then!"

The second time around I mixed up the sets to try and improve time but I bit off a bit more than I could chew and ended up doing the same amount of sets. It was still able to beat the time.

Today I wanted to stick with the same amounts of sets I had done the first time around, just to be safe. I felt very strong on the push ups. Stronger than I had expected. The sit-ups were fine but my main worry were the inverted rows as usual. This time around I was doing the straight leg version which definitely took its toll on me. The squats were fine also.

My total time was 14minutes 11seconds. That's slower than my previous time which I'm putting down to the straight leg version of the inverted rows. I found myself taking mid set breaks more often and earlier on in the earlier sets than before. The straight leg version add more difficulty to the row and therefore more fatigue. I was a little disappointed but I felt strong in all the other exercises so I definitely felt a physical improvement overall. Hopefully next time I'll beat today's time.

Don't be afraid to fail, be afraid to not try.