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Why We Do Pushups

markpeterdavis.com

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Re: Why We Do Pushups

#31

Post by SoftwareMaven »

jrockway wrote: post #21
joe_the_user wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, this approach seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Push-ups are, at-best, a difficult exercise to get right (see http://thetoptwoinches.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/100/ ). Do them in bad form and you can injure yourself. Is the team leader going to be both an expert at management AND an expert at physical education? Does the company want the lawsuits if an employee is injured exercising at the direction of th…

That's not what "hostile work environment" means. Mandatory pushups are one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard of, but I assume you are not going to be fired if you don't do them. When everyone starts doing pushups, go out for a quick run, or something.

Depending on the situation, you could have a hostile work environment[0]. Take a guy who is over weight and weak, make him feel uncomfortable about not being "good enough" to do the push ups, add "good natured" ribbing from co-workers that goes on day after day and subtle "anti-team" vibe because the rest of the team is pushing up together.

Likely? No. Possible? Yes. Something to watch for but not something to stress unduly about.

[0] Remember, hostile work environment is not about any specific protected class (age, race, etc), but about general feelings of harassment and discomfort. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_work_environment

Re: Why We Do Pushups

#32

Post by tomjen3 »

That has got to be one of the dumbest ideas ever. Provide locked bike storage with a roof and showers.

What happened to come to work to, well, work?

Re: Why We Do Pushups

#33

Post by kd0amg »

jmonegro wrote: post #18
Symmetry wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If think you're parsing that wrong. Being a meathead isn't at all the same as being athletic, I would hope that nobody would think that programmers couldn't be athletic. But when people think of programmers excercizing, they tend to think of running or biking or skiing or hiking rather than a "meathead" form of exercise like group pushups. And the fact that you find group pushups "awkward and weird" shows that the au…

Pushups are not a "meathead" form of exercise.

What makes something a "meathead" or "nonmeathead" exercise?

Re: Why We Do Pushups

#34

Post by contextfree »

I like the idea of exercising during the workday - ideally at midday, at a gym within walking distance - but this sort of quasi-mandatory communal exercise seems a bit cultlike in a way I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with.

Re: Why We Do Pushups

#35

Post by redthrowaway »

jrockway wrote: post #25
redthrowaway wrote: post #5

While it's a cool idea, I can only see it working first thing in the morning when everyone gets to the office but before you start work. Otherwise, chances are you'll be interrupting somebody's work, which if you're a programmer can be a huge hit to productivity.

Programmers come to work in the morning?

Hypothetically, were programmers to show up at the same time in some sort of morning analogue, I could see group pushups having a net positive effect.

Re: Why We Do Pushups

#36

Post by ssharp »

This technique doesn't strike me as all that effective for exercise (doing a handful of pushups a day is better than doing nothing, but not by that much) or for team building.

Re: Why We Do Pushups

#38

Post by michaelkeenan »

joelrunyon wrote: post #3

How many people usually end up participating? Is there a big disparity between the number of pushups the strongest person can do vs. the weakest person? Do you guys try to beat old records or just do it to get moving again.

I'm not the OP, but my office has a similar ritual. Out of about eight people in the office, usually three to six of us go out to the patio to do pushups and sometimes martial arts at about 2pm each day.

Our strongest person does about 120 pushups in a row (he is really strong); the least strong does about 10; the least strong male does about 40. We try to beat our old personal records but there's not really any competition between people.

We haven't experienced the problems predicted by others in this thread. It's not explicitly a team-building activity - it's just something some of us do. It's not led by a manager, and managers participate somewhat less than non-managers. It's not mandatory and if people are engrossed in a task, they choose not to join in that day.

Re: Why We Do Pushups

#39

Post by JonLim »

Everyone in the comments seems to be poo-pooing either the pushups themselves or the team building abilities as noted by the author.

I'm not here to defend the team building side (nyeh, it's alright for team building) but pushups are a great exercise to do.

By themselves? No, of course not, but they're good by themselves anyway (full body weight exercise.)

However, in the middle of a long day at your desk, it doesn't hurt to take a 2 minute break to go down and do a bunch of pushups with a couple co-workers. It gets the blood flowing and it gives you an excuse to socialize.

Doesn't seem like a bad idea at all to me.

Re: Why We Do Pushups

#40

Post by davidwparker »

Back when I was in the USAF as a computer programmer, we would do "push-ups for darts" at work. We had a dart board and each person on the team would throw three darts. Each person had to do the combined total of the others in the room (throughout the day). The totals normally ended up between 200-400 (triple 20s was a pain). Granted, I was in the military, so push-ups were part of our PT test anyway, but it was a lot of fun.
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