Staff Sergeant Breaks Army Push Up Record With 40lb Pack On
So how many push ups can you pull off? 10, 50, 100? Could you do 60 push ups in one minute with a 43 pound backpack strapped to you? Well Staff Sergeant John Halsey did and he beat the world record for his efforts, all just to prove a point to his young student solders.
The assistant platoon Sgt. in the Patriot Academy’s Bravo Company at Indiana’s Muscatatuck Urban Training Center observed that his students were acting bored on their day off. Taking note, he challenged them to get up and do something productive – why not try to break a world record? They chuckled about it and told him to go do it himself and guess what? To their surprise he did.
While he may not have joined the military for exactly this reason, Halsey decided to go for the wearing a 40 pound pack, a record that at the time was held by Paddy Doyle in Great Britain who had done 51 push ups in a minute with the same weight pack in 2010. Halsey made up his mind to not just break the record but to far exceed it and show his soldiers that if they give it their all, anything is possible.
Halsey trained every single day for 2 months. When the time came to attempt to beat the record, over 100 Patriot Academy students showed up in the school house gymnasium where a 40 pound kettle bell weight was put into a 3 pound backpack, increasing the mandatory weight of 40 pounds. When it was time to start Halsey was more than ready and by the time 30 seconds had passed, the students started cheering, jumping out of their seats and pounding the gymnasium floor in excitement, demonstrating huge show of support.
As soon as the crowds counting the numbers hit 52, everyone started cheering but Halsey didn’t stop; he just kept going. Finally the call was made at 60 seconds with a final count of 60 push ups in one minute, wearing a 43 pound pack!
Photo credit here.
Halsey’s main goal was to show his students you can do anything if you’re determined enough to do it. He also expects that a lot of his students will now do their best to out do him one of these days and he hopes they do because he feels it will make them better soldiers. Sure winning the Guinness World Record is a fantastic way to commemorate the achievement but, for Halsey, the true accomplishment is the example he set for his soldiers.
Benefits of Standard and Military Pushups
When carried out properly, both versions of pushups provide cardiovascular advantages as well as build abdomen, triceps, leg and back muscles. As a matter of fact, pushups are one of the most effective exercises when it comes to developing core strength. Pushups executed in succession and with the consistency of one another also provide a workout that burns calories and boosts the metabolism.