Benchmarking & Passing out at Bondi gym

Benchmarking

 Passing out at Bondi gym

 

Matty O’Neill set the benchmarking tasks for the bet at Bondi Gym.

1. Push-ups in 1 minute
2. Stationary bike at full resistance – distance in 2 minutes
3. Dips till fail
4. Chin ups till fail
5. Plank till fail
6. Bench press
7. Leg presses in one minute

No need to publish results now - I think we can all agree they were pretty ordinary. Not sure about everyone else but it has been several years between gym visits for me. Duges is off to a bad start, having not shown up to the benchmarking. This may be related to Chuck forgetting to call him. Still – he has a specific goal and high base fitness which shouldn’t change much by simply peeling flesh from his abdomen.

 

Here is  a clip of Matty smashing out an outstanding 80+ (we lost count) push-ups in one minute, needless to say he was the far and away winner in this category. And all other categories.

 

For comparison, here is Tone:

Unfortunately I was not quick enough to capture any actual push ups.

The Man-Faint

(distant but equally life-threatening relative of the Man-Flu)

Full disclosure would require at this point that I mention the fainting. After the stationary bike, plank and the push-ups, I felt a little light headed. Had to go outside and sit in the rain for a while gathering my thoughts, sipping baby sips of water. Eventually I gathered my self and went over to the other competitors, to act normal. When four men are standing in a gym talking, it is fairly normal for one of them to fall violently to a seated position, right? The miasma of the gym didn't help things. I was so confused by my body that I went looking for the mens changerooms, thinking maybe a poo would help (!?). I got to the womens changerooms, and realised that the mens was all the way up on the first floor, the thought of having climb a flight of stairs was all too much and I passed out cold. Oddly, when I smashed the back of my head on the floor, and bit my tongue, it immediately made me feel better.

Matty found me wandering around bumping into walls and made a quick diagnosis – he guessed correctly that I had skipped breakfast that morning, so he bought me a Gatorade. After drinking half of that, I felt normal again and could continue the benchmarking. 
I had no idea that blood sugar or salt levels or whatever could hammer home so fast and hard if you exert yourself to failure. A little point to note down and never fuck with again - don't skip breakfast.

This of course ruins the benchmark for my hypothesis. I expect my health to deteriorate over the month - I expect to look and feel like most vegans I know - like a sigh in human form. So at the end of the month, unless the second I walk into the gym I have a heart attack and die, then it will be difficult to show veganism has deteriorated my health. We’ll see.

As part of the benchmarking, I also took a shirtless “selfie” this week. I thought that would be an easy thing to do, but it was extremely difficult. Not because I look like a lump of goats cheese rolled in pubes, more that I look like an idiot who took a photo of himself in the mirror without a shirt on. So it wont form part of the benchmarking.