🦎 year of the lizard pushups

The best way to grow mind and body

What are lizard pushups?

So, out in the Western US, all these lizards hang out on rocks and sidewalks, etc. They do pushups.

It’s a competitive move: “look how buff I am.” When they see another lizard, they do pushups. When they see you looking at them, same.

As a human, I have also attempted to do pushups. The limiting factor for me is actually my tendons, not arm muscles. I’m able to do a set of regular pushups, but then my elbows will hurt for four days afterwards. That’s not sustainable exercise.

Then, I found Hampton at Hybrid Calisthenics who shares a free workout routine.

Hampton offers multiple options for pushups, starting with wall pushups (standing facing a wall, gently leaning in and pushing back to standing). Not much weight to push, compared to a full pushup on the ground. But Hampton recommends working up to 3 sets of 50 wall pushups before proceeding to the next kind of pushup. That’s a lot of wall pushups!

What I love about this approach is it’s presented without judgment. Different bodies are going to benefit from different kind of pushups.

For me right now, I find that knee pushups (pushups on the ground, with your knees down for support) are a good workout that my tendons don’t complain bitterly about afterwards.

Knee pushups have a stigma. “Girl pushups,” I remember kids saying mockingly.

But really, it’s not more masculine or feminine to do one kind of pushups or another.

Lizards do all these kinds of pushups, actually. Lizards do pushups vertically clinging to a wall. Lizards do pushups flat on a rock. It all depends on where the lizard feels the need to be at that moment.

“Knee pushups” are so 2024. Drumroll please…2025 is the year of Lizard Pushups.

Not only does Lizard Pushups sound cooler, it represents a whole theory of how to work on things.

Lizard pushups allow us to compete at whatever our fitness level happens to be, like a lizard looking in the mirror.

If writing a whole essay is too hard, how about writing one sentence? Or how about finding a photo that reminds you of the feeling you hope to capture in words?

If going outside for a walk every day in the winter is too much, can you step outside for 30 seconds? Or sit next to a window to get some sun for a few minutes?

If landing a new client feels overwhelming, can you find one person every day who you can send a business-related email to?

Sensei says, about improving in aikido, “Don’t beat others. Beat yourself.”

Find out how you can improve, in whatever you wish to work on, and compete, incrementally, with your own progress. That’s how we continue to grow.

Thanks so much for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments.

Take care,

Rey