Nat Locke: Pardon the patella-popping pun but I’m giving the squat challenge a good crack

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Nat Locke: Pardon the patella-popping pun but I’m giving the squat challenge a good crack

Every now and then, I find myself doing something rash and unpredictable, just to feel alive. And that’s how I found myself signing up for the 58 squats a day challenge.

It’s testament to the fact that

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advertising pays off, because after being fed an ad for the third time, I found myself saying, “Oh, why not?”

Now, there’s a few things to consider here. Firstly, it’s a fundraiser for the National Breast ******* Foundation, and having lost three friends to breast ******* in the last five years, I figured it was a worthy cause. Also, every now and then, I feel the need to challenge myself.

It’s the reason I did Ocsober a few years ago, which turned out to be the dullest month of my existence, but I did dine out on the self-righteousness for years to come.

And finally, how hard can it be to do a few squats? I already do some at the gym, so this’ll be a cinch, right?

So, I signed up for the challenge. And somewhat inexplicably, during that sign up process, I recklessly eschewed the 58 squat challenge and signed myself up for triple that. Three friends lost to breast *******, so three times the challenge. It’s simple maths.

Until I realised that meant I had committed to doing 174 squats a day. ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FOUR. That’s a total of 5394 squats for the month of March. And I am here to tell you that’s a lot.

I mean, squats are a great exercise. You can do them anywhere. You don’t need any particular equipment. You can do them in your civvies. You don’t have to throw yourself onto the ground like when you’re doing godforsaken burpees (which, incidentally, are named after the dastardly villain who invented them: Royal Huddleston Burpee Sr. Impress your friends with that fact).

But 174 of them is a significant amount, especially when you have to do it every single day for 31 days.

Oh, and then there’s the fact that I have problematic kneecaps.

Fifteen months ago, I blew my knee up while engaging in the thoroughly unathletic pursuit of getting out of bed. It scuppered my plans of hiking the Milford Track in New Zealand, a holiday I was leaving for just 10 days after the injury occurred.

I had to rehab that thing for months, spending countless hours trudging up and down in the water walking lane at Fremantle Leisure Centre while being lapped by elderly ladies who had just gotten new knees. The entire sorry episode was a humiliating exercise.

Then, last November, I fell off my bike and hurt that knee again. I wound up on crutches for a couple of weeks, although it just turned out to be bone bruising. Sure, bone bruising doesn’t sound that bad, but believe me, it was excruciating and took at least six weeks to come good.

So here I am, doing 174 squats a day and trying to ignore the light crunching sounds coming from under my kneecaps.

Just imagine that one person in your life who eats too loudly, then imagine they’re eating crunchy nut cornflakes, and that’s a rough approximation of the sound my knees are making with every rep. Fun.

The secret to doing 174 of anything is to break it up into smaller lots, for both my knees’ and my sanity’s benefit.

I bang out 10 reps before I leave the house in the morning (at roughly 4.40am) and then I’ve roped the rest of my team into joining me to do several sets of 10 during the show. If we put our backs into it, I can knock off 100 before 9am.

When I get home, I put something in a high traffic area to act as a visual reminder.

Basically, that means I leave something large and unignorable on the lounge room floor, so that every time I go to step around it, I’m reminded to whack out another 10 squats. So far, it’s working.

Will I make it all the way through? Well, I’m one of those people who once I’ve committed to something, I’m certainly going to give it a crack. Pardon the patella-popping pun.

And if my knees give way before the month is up, I’m sure I can come up with another equally awful exercise.

In the meantime, the memory of those three incredible women spurs me on. Besides, they would all consider this utter madness, and I’ve no doubt they’re having a great belly laugh about it as we speak.

And that’s enough of a reason for me.

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