At the end of March 2020, I made a decision. Thirty days. Every single day. No excuses, no skipped sessions, no renegotiating with myself at 6 a.m. I was going to complete a 30-day push up challenge — and I was going to document every step of it.
What I didn’t expect was that a fitness challenge would teach me more about personal development, consistency, and building strengths than almost anything I’d done in years of coaching. Here’s what happened.
Why I Started
The year 2020 had brought a kind of enforced stillness. The world slowed down, routines collapsed, and it became easy to let discipline slide with it. I’d been coaching clients on accountability and consistency for years — telling people that the habits they build in ordinary moments define them in extraordinary ones. I realised it was time to walk that talk.
Push ups are simple. You don’t need equipment. You don’t need a gym. You need a floor and a decision. That simplicity was exactly the point. I wanted to test whether I could commit to something small and non-negotiable every single day for a month.
What Happened on the Hard Days
Days one through five were easy. I was fuelled by novelty and enthusiasm — exactly the kind of surface-level motivation that fades fast. By day eight, the alarm went off and I lay there thinking of seventeen reasons why today could be an exception.
None of those reasons were real. They were the voice of resistance — and I’ve heard that voice described many ways in coaching: as fear, as comfort-seeking, as the ego protecting its habits. I’ve coached clients through it a hundred times. Living it yourself is different.
The days you least want to show up are the days that matter most. Not because of what you accomplish physically — but because of what you prove to yourself.— Michael, MCMATHIUS
Day fourteen was probably the hardest. I was tired. Genuinely tired — not the ‘could push through it’ kind, but the depleted kind. I did five push ups that day. Just five. And I counted it. Because the challenge was never about the number. It was about the identity: someone who shows up, even imperfectly, even when it’s hard.
Three Lessons That Changed How I Coach
1. Consistency beats intensity every time
I didn’t do a hundred push ups on any given day. But I did them every day. By the end of thirty days, the cumulative reps were in the thousands. The same principle applies to developing a strength: a small, consistent investment in what you’re naturally good at compounds into something significant. One powerful coaching session a week, consistently, over six months, will transform you more than an intense three-day workshop.
2. The identity comes before the behaviour
The shift happened around day twelve. I stopped thinking of it as ‘doing push ups’ and started thinking of it as ‘being someone who does push ups every day.’ That identity — small as it sounds — changed how I made decisions about it. When you build a strengths practice, the same shift is everything. You don’t just ‘use your strengths.’ You become someone who leads from them.
3. Accountability structures work
I posted every day. Day one through day thirty. Not because I needed an audience, but because the public commitment created a structure that my own willpower couldn’t always provide. In coaching, this is why working with another person outperforms working alone — not because you’re incapable, but because accountability is a system, not a character trait.
If you’ve been waiting for the ‘right time’ to invest in your own strengths development — the challenge is now. You don’t need perfect conditions. You need a decision and a structure to support it.
How This Applies to Your Strengths Journey
The 30-day push up challenge is now complete. But the lesson isn’t really about fitness. It’s about what happens when you make a commitment to yourself and honour it, day after day, even when it’s inconvenient, even when you don’t feel like it.
Your strengths are the same. They don’t develop in a single workshop or a single coaching session. They develop through the daily practice of using them, noticing them, and investing in them. Over thirty days. Over ninety days. Over a lifetime.
If this resonated with you — if you recognise the tension between knowing what you’re capable of and actually showing up for it — that’s exactly where I want to meet you. That’s where the coaching work gets interesting.
