Mon 12 Nov 2007
When I was younger, I had a lot of time to run through the woods and climb trees and scale buildings. In high school, my bookbag overflowed with textbooks so that I stayed fit (while probably injuring my spine) lugging them around. In college, my classes were spread out around campus to the point that I had to sprint in between them. The semester I took 21 credits I was *very* fit (also, *very* tired.)
Now-a-days, I am a cubicle warrior. That means I sit on my hindquarters for up to ten hours a day, eating peanut M&Ms and getting fatter (and probably getting an RSI from typing too much (more on that soon.))
In an effort to reverse our fitness decline, my genius friend Burdette and I lead the programmers in push ups and pull ups at work every day. Are you in better shape than a computer programmer? Our programmer fitness test is simple: pull ups and push ups.
Q. How many pull ups/chin ups can you do? Q. How many push ups can you do in 60 seconds? Q. How many 1 arm pull ups (other arm holding your wrist) can you do?
Actually, we’ve begun to gather the data together in order to do some data mining (multiple regression analysis, decision tree, neural network, classification, clustering, etc.) On Wednesday, I’ll release some more information about the findings.
How did I do on our test? Well, I can do 19 pull ups, 7 one arm pull ups, and 63 push ups. Not too bad for a rotund nerd, eh?
Factoid: our British friends call push ups “press ups.”
November 13th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Just upper body metrics? Shouldn’t that favor the desk-bound nerd? What about adding some jumping jacks or other aerobic activity?
November 13th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
point well taken. the limiting factor, as I see it, is sweating. no one like to sweat at work, so our fitness test can’t induce perspiration.
still, i agree we should test leg strength somehow…
November 13th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
I think this is a lazy attempt to make yourself feel better about working in a cube all day. How about you stop spending so much time with the ladies and, at least once a week, come to the gym? Simply doing some pull ups and push ups won’t do you any good when it comes to the tushie you’re growing in your cube.
November 14th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
[…] couple of days ago, we talked about nerd fitness. At work, we recorded information on those who joined us for our nerd fitness test, and as […]