Habit Hacking & Exercise

(Llewellyn Falco) #1

TL:DR; I do a push up after every game I play.

I’ve been very interested in Habit Swaps ever since reading ‘power of habit’. It said

Losing a Habit: damn hard
Create a Habit: hard
Swapping a Habit: easy

The idea is a habit is:
Trigger: event, smell, taste, etc.
Routine: the thing you do
Reward: why you do it.
Craving: let’s do it again

Oddly, the mechanics of the routine kinda don’t matter. So you can replace it, also long as the rest stays in place.

I’ve done this for 3 things so far.

  1. drinking water
  2. eating keto
  3. pushups

I wanted to talk about the 3rd as it might be helpful to others.

#Pushups after games
I noticed I play games on my phone/ipad a lot. Often I will play one then play another without even really thinking about it. This is what clued me into the fact that it’s a habit.
The trigger: game ends.
The routine: play another game
The reward: not bored (doing something)

I also play a bunch of games(20-40 a day)
I decided to swap this out with a single push up.
To be honest, this might have been a bit ambitious, I’m not in great shape. If I would make a recommendation, I would have started with 1 pushup from my knees.

Anyways, that was a bit over 2 weeks ago. Day 2 was pretty hard, arms hurt a lot. in day 3 or 4 I started watching a few videos about pushups to correct my form. About a week into it I went to 2 pushups per game. I was going to go to 3 pushups, but found it took a bit too long, so instead went to doing pushups with my feet on a book, so I was slightly elevated. Then I went to feet on a step stool. I currently at 2 pushups with my feet on a chair.

I’ve done somewhere between 1000-2000 pushups overall because of this and it’s been rather easy to maintain.

A couple of thoughts overall:

  1. I’m curious to see if I can gradually raise the height of my feet so that in 6-8 months I’m doing handstand pushups.
  2. I am always ok in doing less (1 push up, low height, on knees, etc) as long as I am doing something
  3. on rare occasions I will do 2 games in a row then double pushups. I don’t do it often and it’s not recommended.
  4. might swap out the exercise at some point with a different muscle group. maybe swap back and forth by day. don’t know
  5. would be good to have an exercise I could also do if playing games in a meeting/lecture or on a plane

anyways, I wanted to share my story, hope it provide hope and ideas for someone else.

(John) #2

Very interesting, I don’t have any games I enjoy, what are your top 3?

(Llewellyn Falco) #3

Clash Royale, Two Dots, Lux USA

(Mary Ann) #4

Interesting way to stack the habits. I’m interested to see how far this goes. I did this with drinking more water in the AM. It worked and keeps my hydration up throughout the day. I tied drinking water with giving my dogs their meds. :slight_smile: Hey whatever works, right?

(Andrew Anderson) #5

I’m stuck on Clash of Clans, and the Simpsons Tapped Out. I should do push-ups penance, sounds like a good habit.

#6

Is the goal increasing pushups per day or decreasing games per day?

(Llewellyn Falco) #7

The goal is to use an existing habit to benefit me. Right now it doesn’t mean increase the number of pushups, as much as increase my upper body strength. Hence the use of raising my feet rather than increasing the reps I do each time.

(Llewellyn Falco) #9

Just an update:

I’m currently rotating between days to allow a rest day and try different activities. My current stats are

odd days: 8 pushups
even days: 1 minute of stretching my hamstrings (sitting l-shape against a wall with my feet elevated on a stool)

still playing 20-40 games a day so 160-320 pushups a day or 20-40 minutes of stretching.

For a while I was doing squats on the even days, might go back to that or try something with abs.
I’m surprised at the gains in flexibility although I’m still not flexible, but much more than before. I’m also very happy that the habit is sustaining so easily

#10

This is so cool! I wasn’t around when you started this thread so I’m happy to see your posts now.

I’ve done some work on habits recently and built (very gradually) up to a morning routine that I love.