whistlekick 60-Second Push-Up Challenge

One of the most popular aspects of our tournament attendance is our Push-Up Challenge! In this free event, participants of all ranks and ages compete to perform as many push-ups as possible in 60 seconds. It's fun and we give free gear to the winners in each of the four divisions: girls under 15 years old, women 15 & up, boys under 15 and men 15 & up. Many people look at the divisions and say that they're not fair - that younger people will win the adult divisions and the older kids will win the junior divisions. Well, history has shown otherwise, and there's very little correlation between age and number of push-ups!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1159.0"]we take a photo of the scoreboard after each tournament. these results are from the 2015 new england classic in peterborough, nh.

In order for a push-up to count, participants must make contact with the red foam block you can see in the photo above. At the other end of the push-up, arms must be fully extended. Those are the only rules - feet can be placed any way the participant wants, same with hand placement. As many schools teach push-ups differently, we felt this was the most fair method. 

We keep a running tally of who performs push-ups and how many they do, as you can see on the left. Each participant receives a card with their score, the date and instructions for finding out the winners as well as claiming the prize, if they won. We like giving out these cards because it makes it easy for people to track their progress.

Here we see someone eagerly watching another doing pushups. Do push-ups ever get this interesting elsewhere?

We post each of the tournament's results on our Facebook page as well in our blog. We've worked hard to make this simple, fun and inspiring. Regular tournament attendees have come to expect the push-up challenge and we've even heard of some participants training extra in order to get their push-up score up. We don't mind that, at all. :)

Claiming Your Prize

If you're one of the push-up challenge winners - congratulations! - claiming your prize is easy. Simply post a photo of your score card (with the score side facing the camera) on Facebook. Make sure the post is set to "public" and tag whistlekick in it. You'll need to make sure you're a fan of the whistlekick page so you can tag us. Once we see the tag, we'll comment on your post - and then it's time for you to email us and tell us which piece of gear, and which size, you want to claim. We do try and coordinate delivery at a future tournament to save shipping costs, but if we're not going to see you again soon, we'll certainly ship your sparring gear to you.