Fitness challenges that start from your max

Good fitness challenges set a number that is hard for you, not for some average person. Decades of goal research found that specific, hard goals beat "do your best" until people reach the limit of what they can do. So build the challenge from your own max and keep track as you go.

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Do your best is not a goal

Edwin Locke and Gary Latham summed up 35 years of goal-setting research in a 2002 paper in American Psychologist. Specific, hard goals raised performance on more than 100 different tasks, with over 40,000 participants in at least eight countries.

In their own studies, a specific, hard goal led to higher performance than telling people to do their best, and it did so again and again. Their explanation is that “do your best” has nothing outside you to measure against, so each person defines it their own way.

There is one exception in the paper. On a task that is new and complex, a hard performance goal can make people anxious, and they hunt for strategies at random. For an exercise you already know how to do, the main finding holds: give yourself a number for today.

  1. Vague goal Do your best No yardstick to check against
  2. Specific, hard goal 3 sets of 8 push-ups today Higher performance
  • 100+different tasks
  • 40,000+participants
  • 8+countries
35 years of goal-setting research. Locke and Latham, 2002

Harder goals work up to your limit

The paper describes a straight line: the harder the goal, the more effort and the better the result. The line goes flat in two cases. Either people reach the limit of their ability, or they stop being committed to a goal that’s too hard.

Commitment, the authors write, comes from two things: the goal matters to you, and you believe you can reach it. Telling other people about the goal helps too. A fixed number like 100 push-ups a day sits far above some people’s limit and far below others’, so one number can’t be hard and reachable for everyone at once.

Harder goal, higher result Your limit: the line goes flat

Goal difficulty →↑ Performance

The shape Locke and Latham describe, not measured data

Pick a challenge from your own max

Every program on this site starts from one number: your max, the most clean reps you can do in one set. For the plank it’s your best hold. Find it with the push-up test, and the plan works out the rest.

Try it: pick an exercise and drag your max. Each set is half of it and grows a little every week. The 30-day push-up challenge has a rest day every fourth day and a new max test on day 30. The plank challenge rests every fifth day. If you can do fewer than 8 push-ups, you start on a box or your knees.

Your challenge 30-day push-up challenge

3×8

Day 1 · 24 reps in total

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Work day Rest day New max test

Sets are half your max. Every seven days, each set gets one more rep, or two from a max of 30.

The 100 push-ups a day plan would start you at 40 on day 1.

Pushgard prices each fight from your max

In Pushgard the phone camera counts your reps, and every counted rep hits the monster in front of you. How many reps a monster is worth comes from your measured max. In the first tower, a fight in the first block costs 45% of it and a fight in the last block 100%. Each block’s chief costs more than twice a normal fight.

With a max of 30 push-ups on Normal, the first fight is 14 reps and the last chief is 66. With a max of 10, the first fight is 5 reps. Every new tower is 15% steeper. Easy takes 10% off each fight and Hardcore adds 15%. A chief is meant to take two or three tries, and the wounds you leave on it stay for a day.

  1. 1430 Block 1
  2. 1736 Block 2
  3. 2146 Block 3
  4. 2656 Block 4
  5. 3066 Block 5

Fight Chief

First tower, push-ups, max of 30, Normal difficulty. Reps per fight.

A weekly goal with a bar you can watch

Locke and Latham also found that goals work better with feedback. If you can’t see how you’re doing, you can’t adjust your effort, and goals plus feedback did better than goals alone.

Pushgard sets a weekly goal for each exercise from your max at the start of the week. The base is one and a half maxes a day for five days, and the more exercises you pick, the smaller each one’s share. With a max of 30 push-ups and four exercises, Easy asks for 113 push-ups a week. Normal doubles that and Hardcore triples it. Every counted rep moves the bar, and a new record raises the goal from the next week. The push-up counter page shows how the camera decides which reps count.

  1. Easy113
  2. Normal225
  3. Hardcore338
Push-ups a week from a max of 30, with four exercises chosen
Next floor

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Questions

Still wondering

Short answers to what people ask next.

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What are some good fitness challenge ideas?

A 30-day push-up or squat challenge, a plank challenge or a daily push-up target. Pick one exercise you can count, test your max and take the numbers from there.

How hard should a workout challenge be?

Hard enough that you have to work for it, and still within reach. In goal research, harder goals led to better results until people hit the limit of their ability or gave up on a goal that was too hard.

Is there a fitness challenge app that counts reps?

Pushgard counts push-ups, squats, crunches and the plank with the phone camera. It sets the cost of every fight and the weekly goal from your own max.

What should I do when a 30-day challenge ends?

Test your max again and start a new month from the new number. If your max went up, every set goes up with it.

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The first slime is waiting

Lean the phone against a wall and do one set. That’s all the gear you need.

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