Four Friends Doing 500 Push-Ups For 50 Days Listening Only To One Proclaimers Song
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A group of friends from university have agreed to take on a bizarre charity challenge in which they will perform 500 push-ups between them each day for 50 straight days, while exclusively listening to the same song over and over again.
They're going to spend their 50 days listening only to The Proclaimers' seminal hit 'I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)'.
By the end of it all, when they push-up, well they know they're gonna be, they're gonna be the men who wonder what on earth they've done with their lives to get to this sorry point.
I mean, it's an absolute classic, but listening to that and only that for 50 straight days could end up being a method of torture.
Because there's four of them, that amounts to 125 push-ups each, every single day. By the end of the challenge, they'll have done 25,000 in total.
It's all for a good cause though. They've set up a JustGiving page if you want to help that good cause yourself.
Joe Hensman and his three mates, Ben, Cooper and Jacob, are performing this unique and utterly bizarre feat of endurance in the hopes of raising £1,000 ($1,300) for mental health charity MIND.
Joe told us: "Over lockdown we, along with our friend, family, and other people all around the globe, have been suffering from mental health challenges. As a group we decided to raise money and awareness for mental health issues.
"We chose MIND specifically for our close friend who has benefited a lot from their on-going support over many years, helping her look after her mum."
So, at this stage you might be asking, why The Proclaimers?
Believe it or not, there is an actual reason.
Joe explained: "During lockdown we have been stuck together and have found ourselves binging the TV show How I Met Your Mother.
"During the show Marshall owns a car which can only play one song - 'I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)' by The Proclaimers."
He added: "After the challenge we think that hearing the song will induce a reflex action in which we drop down to the floor and start doing push ups.
"We'd like to say we will carry on listening to it afterwards but we can't make any promises. At least we will know all the words."
As for the physical elements, the training has already begun. Not a moment too soon either, as Joe admits none of them were exactly push-up machines in advance of accepting the challenge.
He said: "At the start of our training we could not do many 'official' push-ups at all.
"We spent most of our training doing knee push-ups to slowly build up our strength. However, coming up to the start of the challenge we are getting strong enough to do all of the push-ups in one sitting, but are still worried about whether we can keep this up for 50 days."
Joe concluded: "We are going to do it together. We can all motivate and push each other to complete this challenge, to show the best way to cope with any obstacle, be it physical or mental, is to do it with others.
"There is no way we could do it alone.
"Another part is we know that many people are in a far worse situation than having to listen to the same song, which will drive us forward even when we have listened to The Proclaimers hundreds of times."
Well, good luck to them. You can donate to their brave cause right here.
