Two-thousand push-ups: Charlton shares on successful fundraiser for CMHA

Weyburn's Barclay Charlton has completed the Canada-wide Push-up Challenge to raise funds for the Canadian Mental Health Association

"I'm done my 2,000 push-ups," he said. "It was 2,000 pushups in 23 days and that ended on Saturday of last week. We took Sundays off and they gave you a certain number to do each day."

He said by the time the 23 days ended, he was at about 178 push-ups each day, but it started gradually with about 50 per day.

"I would just break it up into three or four sets, starting out 25 was probably the limit, then towards the end, I was up to 40 or sometimes a couple extra at a time. So if you do it in four groups of 40 over the course of a day, it's not so bad," shared Charlton. "Sometimes I left it till too late in the day, till after supper, and then I was trying to squeeze in 150, in the last two hours. But I did complete every push up on the day it was scheduled for."

He said he raised almost $1,500, which was three times his original goal, and donations are still able to be received until March 8th for those who want to help support the cause.

In all, across Canada, $2.4 million dollars was raised from the inaugural event, with a total of 44.7 million push-ups, squats, or sit-ups, depending on the individual.

For Charlton, it was entirely push-ups, and after about two weeks, he said he had to ease up on his upper body training during his morning trips to the gym. He said while some days he dreaded the task, he always felt better once he completed them. In fact, he didn't feel quite as good on the Sunday breaks from the challenge.

He said not only did it help boost his sense of pride, he completed each push-up with the higher goal in mind. 

"It's all just on the honour system and you're raising money for a good cause," he noted. "I don't think that anybody would sign up and say they did it and not do it, especially when people are donating to you, it keeps people accountable." 

With this being the inaugural event, Charlton said he'd do it again, and he hopes to see others from Weyburn do the same next time. In fact, there is also the option of sharing the push-ups with a team.

"If you had three or four people and you only had to do 150 every two or three days or something, it might be a little easier to raise money as a team, too, as a as opposed to an individual, and you'd be drawing from another two or three different people's circles," he shared. "For me, the push-ups is fine, but it was more about just raising the money for a good cause."

"It was pretty painless to do, you just signed up online. They send you instructions, you download the app and it's just follow this every day and get it done. Some of those days where I left it till 6:30 at night and I hadn't done any, and I had to do 150. then it was like 'small steps'. But because people had donated and I was accountable for it, I just made sure I got it done."

Find the donation page HERE.