Comparing 35 for 35 Against the Best in The World

For the last few days, I have been walking around with a bounce in my step (my left knee ache aside).  My chest has been out, my head has been held high, and I have somehow been feeling even more confident/cocky/arrogant than usual.  After all, in just one short month, I had:

• Destroyed my 225 lb bench press goal by 30% (13 reps vs. 10 goal)
• Blown away my pull-ups goal by 20% (30 vs. 25)
• Annihilated my jump rope goal by 50% (150 in 1 min vs. 100)

Well, this morning all of that cockiness slowly started disappearing when I began doing some quick Google searches to try to put my 35 goals in context.

It started off with me thinking about jump roping and really having no point of comparison at all for the 150 I did in 1 minute.  I see people struggle with pull-ups at the gym so I knew the 30 I did was pretty good but the jump rope goal was completely made up without context.  After looking on YouTube for “world record fastest jump rope,” I found this Asian girl going just a little bit faster than what I did.  Check her out:



There are so many hilarious things about this video I'm not sure what to say other than she did 162 in 30 seconds!  Suddenly, my 150 in 1 minute doesn’t look so great anymore.
After watching the video, it occurred to me that other than a few items on the list, I had absolutely no perspective on where I stood versus the best in the world.  Wouldn’t it be more interesting to compare my goals to some world records?  The answer?  It’s definitely more interesting… but definitely demoralizing.  Let’s go through some of my other goals and see what the records look like:

• Push-ups:  My goal is 70.  I tried this in an earlier post and did 70 but the form wasn’t great.  What’s the record?  Oh, only 10,507 by Minoru Yoshida of Japan in October, 1980.  No, that isn't a typo.  Ten Thousand Five Hundred and Seven!  Damn, I suck.

• Pull-ups:  My goal was 25.  I did 30.  Awesome except for the fact that the world record is 232.  The record for most pull-ups in 1 minute though is 50 so I feel a little better about that.  The 232 consecutive is defined as “not dismounting.”  In other words, you can hang and rest (if you really want to call that resting).  Damn, I suck.

• Free throws in basketball:   My goal is 20 in a row.   In the NBA, the record is 97 in a row in games by Michael Williams of the Minnesota Timberwolves. He accomplished this feat over 2 seasons (1992-1993, 1993-1994).  The Guinness world record holder is Ted St. Martin, who made 5,221 consecutive free throws on April 28, 1996. He did it while giving a shooting clinic to students, taking over 7 hours to complete the task.  Damn, I suck.

• 3 pointers in basketball:  My goal is 10 in a row.  Dave Hopla has the record with 209 college 3 pointers in a row and 78 NBA 3 pointers in a row.  Apparently, he does shooting demonstrations at various camps he works and rarely misses.  At a 2007 camp in Los Angeles, for example, he made all 272 shots he took.  Damn, I suck.

• 1 mile run:  My goal is 5 min, 30 seconds.  The world record is 3:43.  That’s beyond insane.  That’s pretty close to as fast as I can sprint 100 meters…assuming I could hold that for an entire mile.  Damn, I suck.

• Longest golf drive:  My goal is to hit a 300 yard drive this year without the help of wind and downhill.  The record distance achieved in The RE/MAX European Long Drive Championship is 474 yards by Allen Doyle in September 2005.  I’m not sure what the wind conditions were but usually that is factored in to whether a record will stand or not.  Damn, I suck.

• 400 yard Swimming Freestyle:  My goal is 6 minutes for 400 yards.  Ian Thorpe of Australia went 3 min, 40 seconds in the 400 Meters (about 10% longer than yards obviously) at the 2004 Olympics.  Basically, he is about twice as fast as me at that distance.  Damn, I suck.

• Juggling:  My goal is just to juggle 3 balls in my hands for 20 seconds.  I’ll try that right now.  World record?  I have no idea but will look that up in a sec.  First things first…let’s give this a shot.



Ha, that didn’t quite go as planned…at least you know these videos are authentic!  Also, all the videos I’ve shown have been done with 1 take in case you were curious…not that there is any doubt when you watch me trying to juggle.   I finally did it but I was pretty much choking in the beginning.  I am confident though that anyone who wants to learn to juggle can practice for about 10-15 minutes and be able to do it.  I would say it’s pretty easy but I didn’t exactly show that on the video.  Anyway, another goal checked off the list!  That’s 4 completed and 31 remaining.  That feels pretty good.

Now, I’m going to make myself feel bad again by checking out the juggling world record.  Something tells me this is going to be impressive.  Ok, here we go…found this video of Bruce Sarafian.




Ummm, yeah.  So I guess juggling 3 balls isn’t that impressive.  See, I told you…finding out where you stand is interesting but pretty demoralizing.  It turns out that no matter how good you are at something, there is someone else who is way, way, way better.

So, what’s the moral of all this?  People like to say there are no winners or losers…they like to say they’re not competing against anyone but themselves…they like to say they’re happy just participating and playing the game.  Here at Schmeis35for35, I call that weak.  In a time with Google searches and YouTube videos accessible from anywhere within seconds, it’s too easy to know exactly how you stack up to not want to find out.

Competing against yourself means you simultaneously finish 1st and last every time you compete…wouldn’t you rather just finish 1st?

Schmeis