For the past week I've been doing the Stand Up to Cancer 100 Squats per Day challenge and fundraiser.

@livinguktaiwan brought this to my attention last week when she joined it and posted about it. I do not live in the UK so I can't easily formally join, but I decided to informally join both to provide her moral support and to bring further attention to this cause.

Fuck Cancer

Cancer is a horrible disease. Most of us will encounter cancer at some point in our lives if we live long enough. We've all seen the scary stats. The most recent one I've seen is 1 in 2 people will get cancer in their life. I've seen that broken down by sex to say 1 in 2 men will get cancer and 1 in 3 women. I've seen stats that 1 in 8 women will get breast cancer. I've also seen that put as 1 in 4 for breast cancer. Men can get that sort of cancer too, by the way. I've read that 1 in 3 men will get prostate cancer. I've even seen that pushed to an extreme and read that if a man lives long enough he will have a prostate issue, probably cancer related. I could go on. Lung cancer is still common, even though smoking rates have dropped in most developed countries. Skin cancer can easily sneak up on us if it appears in a part of the body we don't often see and the doctor doesn't check for it.

Suffice to say cancer is terrifying. Good point is medical technology is getting better at fighting it every year. I've seen news that they are even working on vaccines for some kinds of cancer now. Bad point is, it's still terrible and terrifying!

Cancer runs in my family. On my mom's side, my grandma had breast cancer and had to get a total mastectomy. My cousin on the same side had a cancerous tumor in his brain, coiled around his cerebellum. Luckily he found a good surgeon who was able (in a very long operation) cut it all out and so far the cancer hasn't returned. On my dad's side, his sister had cancer in her uterus and had to have a hysterectomy. Many years later the cancer showed up again all over her body and killed her. In my wife's family, both her uncle on her mom's side and her grandfather on the same side died of stomach cancer.

I have lost friends to cancer, and my friends have lost friends. Just last week one of my long time students told me her dad has lung cancer. She is only 29, so as you can imagine she's not taking the news especially well.

I know charities have their problems. But they also do a lot of good work. We need to do everything possible to contribute to a cure for cancer, contribute to funding for cancer research, contribute for helping people who are already suffering from cancer, and just raise awareness. All this in mind, I am more than happy to join this fundraiser to help raise money and awareness.

If you want to support the fundraiser, please donate here or send HIVE/HBD directly to @livinguktaiwan and she will convert it to fiat and donate it for you.

100 Squats Daily

There's also the exercise part. I do exercise a bit. I jog, I jump rope, I do cycling. I move a lot. But when was the last time I really worked a muscle group doing either resistance training (eg weight lifting) or isometric exercises (eg planks) or compound exercises (like squats).... ah, that's been much longer, probably 25+ years ago when I did weight training in high school and university. That in mind, I thought making myself do some squats everyday couldn't be a bad thing.

I missed the first 2 days of the challenge, so I have only been in it for 7 days now. So far my squat experience has been interesting.

The first day I did all 100 all at once. I probably shouldn't have done that. I write that as if it were easy; it wasn't. Go read my intro post to hear about it. I paid the price and was painfully sore for the next few days. But even sore, I pushed myself to meet at least 100 everyday. After the soreness started to fade, I upped that to 150 and 160. Can I make the rest of the month? I'm going to say yes. Willpower is never something I've had trouble with, and if I commit to doing this, then I will do it.

That said, who knows how I might destroy my body in the process. haha. If you want to follow along more closely, I'm blogging daily on my progress at @mrmiyagi. I know, I know, weird. I started that account several years ago for a gag that I ended up not doing, so I figure I might as well call upon the motivational power of Mr Miyagi to help me with this challenge and use the account now!

Here is my first week:

Again, I would urge you to donate if you can. And if you can't donate, why not join the squats challenge to help spread the word more? If you want to join, leave me a comment on this post and I'll add you to the list. In addition to myself and livinguktaiwan, we have @pardinus and @xrayman too.

And....you?
 

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org.